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Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed significant masses of…
We examine the mechanisms by which atmosphere can be eroded by giant impacts onto Earth-like planets with thin atmospheres, using 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with sufficient resolution to directly model the fate of…
Ozone ($\textrm{O}_3$) is important for the survival of life on Earth because it shields the surface from ionising ultraviolet (UV) radiation. However, the existence of $\textrm{O}_3$ in Earth's atmosphere is not always beneficial.…
The primary epoch of planetary accretion concludes with giant impacts - highly energetic collisions between proto-planets that can play a key role in shaping a planet's inventory of volatile elements. Previous work has shown that single…
In this work we investigate the impact of calculating non-equilibrium chemical abundances consistently with the temperature structure for the atmospheres of highly-irradiated, close-in gas giant exoplanets. Chemical kinetics models have…
Constraining planet formation based on the atmospheric composition of exoplanets is a fundamental goal of the exoplanet community. Existing studies commonly try to constrain atmospheric abundances, or to analyze what abundance patterns a…
Lightning has been suggested to play a role in triggering the occurrence of bio-ready chemical species. Future missions (PLATO, ARIEL, HWO, LIFE) and ground-based ELTs will investigate the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets. We…
Sub-Neptunes (Rp~1.25-4 REarth) remain the most commonly detected exoplanets to date. However, it remains difficult for observations to tell whether these intermediate-sized exoplanets have surfaces and where their surfaces are located.…
Earth likely acquired much of its inventory of volatile elements during the main stage of its formation. Some of Earth's proto-atmosphere must therefore have survived the giant impacts, collisions between planet-sized bodies, that dominate…
Young terrestrial planets, when they are still embedded in a circumstellar disk, accumulate an atmosphere of nebula gas. The evolution and eventual evaporation of the protoplanetary disk affect the structure and dynamics of the planetary…
The heavy element content of giant exoplanets, inferred from structure models based on their radius and mass, often exceeds predictions based on classical core accretion. Pebble drift, coupled with volatile evaporation, has been proposed as…
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…
Atmospheric compositions for rocky exoplanets will depend strongly on the bulk planetary composition and the orbital position of the planet. Non-traditional gases may be present in the atmospheres of exceptionally hot planets. Atmospheres…
We present results of an investigation into the formation of nitrogen-bearing molecules in the atmosphere of Titan. We extend a previous model (Li et al. 2015, 2016) to cover the region below the tropopause, so the new model treats the…
We explore volcanic outgassing on purely rocky, stagnant-lid exoplanets of different interior structures, compositions, thermal states, and age. We focus on planets in the mass range of 1-8 ME (Earth masses). We derive scaling laws to…
Many sub-Neptune exoplanets have been believed to be composed of a thick hydrogen-dominated atmosphere and a high-temperature heavier-element-dominant core. From an assumption that there is no chemical reaction between hydrogen and…
Water-rich super-Earth exoplanets are expected to be common. We explore the effect of late giant impacts on the final bulk abundance of water in such planets. We present the results from smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of…
Methane has been proposed as an exoplanet biosignature. Imminent observations with the James Webb Space Telescope may enable methane detections on potentially habitable exoplanets, so it is essential to assess in what planetary contexts…
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…
During the formation of rocky planets, the surface environments of growing protoplanets were dramatically different from those of present-day planets. The release of gravitational energy during accretion would have maintained a molten…