Related papers: Lightning Chemistry on Earth-like Exoplanets
We present a comprehensive photochemistry model for exploration of the chemical composition of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres. The photochemistry model is designed from the ground up to have the capacity to treat all types of terrestrial…
Chemical models are routinely used to predict the atmospheric composition of exoplanets and compare it with the composition retrieved from observations, but little is known about the reliability of the calculated composition. We carried out…
JWST has revealed sulfur chemistry in giant exoplanet atmospheres, where molecules such as SO2 trace photochemistry, metallicity, and formation and migration. To ascertain the conditions that determine whether (or how much) SO2, H2S, and…
Planet formation models suggest broad compositional diversity in the sub-Neptune/super-Earth regime, with a high likelihood for large atmospheric metal content (> 100 x Solar). With this comes the prevalence of numerous plausible bulk…
We have developed a 1D planetary atmosphere model that solves in a self-consistent manner the evolution of temperature and disequilibrium chemistry in the vertical direction. Thermochemical kinetics is based on a reaction network built from…
Motivated by recent spectroscopic evidence for carbon-rich atmospheres on some transiting exoplanets, we investigate the influence of the C/O ratio on the chemistry, composition, and spectra of extrasolar giant planets both from a…
Little is known about the interaction between atmospheres and crusts of exoplanets so far, but future space missions and ground-based instruments are expected to detect molecular features in the spectra of hot rocky exoplanets. We aim to…
Characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is the new frontier in exoplanetary science. The last two decades of exoplanet discoveries have revealed that exoplanets are very common and extremely diverse in their orbital and bulk…
The atmospheres of synchronously rotating exoplanets are intrinsically three-dimensional, and fast vertical and horizontal winds are expected to mix the atmosphere, driving the chemical composition out of equilibrium. Due to the longer…
Mineral clouds in substellar atmospheres play a special role as a catalyst for a variety of charge processes. If clouds are charged, the surrounding environment becomes electrically activated, and ensembles of charged grains are…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key chemical species that is found in a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In the context of exoplanets, CO2 is an indicator of the metal enrichment (i.e., elements heavier than helium, also called…
Chemical compositions of exoplanets can provide key insights into their physical processes, and formation and evolutionary histories. Atmospheric spectroscopy provides a direct avenue to probe exoplanetary compositions. However, whether…
With JWST slated to gain high fidelity time dependent data on brown dwarf atmospheres, it is highly anticipated to do the same for directly imaged, sub-Jupiter exoplanets. With this new capability, the need for a full 3D understanding to…
Close-in exoplanets with highly eccentric orbits are subject to large variations in incoming stellar flux between periapse and apoapse. These variations may lead to large swings in atmospheric temperature, which in turn may cause changes in…
Terrestrial exoplanets likely form initial atmospheres through outgassing during and after accretion, although there is currently no first-principles understanding of how to connect a planet's bulk composition to its early atmospheric…
Many parameters constraining the spectral appearance of exoplanets are still poorly understood. We therefore study the properties of irradiated exoplanet atmospheres over a wide parameter range including metallicity, C/O ratio and host…
Transmission spectroscopy with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing growing chemical complexity in giant exoplanet atmospheres. Of particular interest is sulfur, which had essentially no observational constraints before JWST.…
We explore the chemistry and observability of nitrogen dominated atmospheres for ultra-short-period super-Earths. We base the assumption, that super-Earths could have nitrogen filled atmospheres, on observations of 55 Cnc e that favour a…
The terrestrial and gas-giant planets in our solar system may represent some prototypes for planets around other stars; the exoplanets because most stars have similar overall elemental abundances as our sun. The solar system planets…
Lightning is present in all solar system planets which form clouds in their atmospheres. Cloud formation outside our solar system is possible in objects with much higher temperatures than on Earth or on Jupiter: Brown dwarfs and giant…