Related papers: Atmospheric Escape Processes and Planetary Atmosph…
Volatile loss from exoplanetary atmospheres and its possible implications for the longevity of habitable surface conditions is a topic of vigorous debate currently. The vast majority of the habitable zone terrestrial-like exoplanets known…
Thermally-driven atmospheric escape evolves from an organized outflow (hydrodynamic escape) to escape on a molecule by molecules basis (Jeans escape) with increasing Jeans parameter, the ratio of the gravitational to thermal energy of…
Studies of planetary atmospheric composition, variability, and evolution require appropriate theoretical and numerical tools to estimate key atmospheric parameters, among which the mass-loss rate is often the most important. In evolutionary…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
In the last 15 years, since the discovery of the first low-mass planets beyond the solar system, there has been tremendous progress in understanding the diversity of (super-)Earth and sub-Neptune exoplanets. Especially the influence of the…
Short-period sub-Neptunes are common in extrasolar systems. These sub-Neptunes are generally thought to have primary atmospheres of protoplanetary-disk gas origin. However, atmospheric escape followed by degassing from their interiors can…
The field of exoplanets is quickly expanding from just the detection of new planets and the measurement of their most basic parameters, such as mass, radius and orbital configuration, to the first measurements of their atmospheric…
Exoplanets with short orbit period reside very close to their host stars. They transition very rapidly between different sectors of the circumstellar space environment along their orbit, leading to large variations of the magnetic field in…
Earth, Mars, and Venus, irradiated by an evolving Sun, have had fascinating but diverging histories of habitability. Although only Earth's surface is considered to be habitable today, all three planets might have simultaneously been…
We present a formalism for a first-order estimation of the magnetosphere radius of exoplanets orbiting stars in the range from 0.08 to 1.3 Mo. With this radius, we estimate the atmospheric surface that is not protected from stellar winds.…
Hot giant exoplanets are very exotic objects with no equivalent in the Solar System that allow us to study the behavior of atmospheres under extreme conditions. Their thermal and chemical day--night dichotomies associated with extreme wind…
Large ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe Earth-like planets in the near future. We explore how different planetary surfaces can strongly influence the climate, atmospheric composition, and remotely detectable spectra…
Studying atmospheric escape from exoplanets can provide important clues about the formation and evolution of exoplanets. Observational evidence of atmospheric escape has been obtained through transit spectroscopy in strong spectral lines of…
The evolution of the atmospheres of low and intermediate-mass planets is strongly connected to the physical properties of their host stars. The types and the past activities of planet-hosting stars can, therefore, affect the overall…
The search for life on exoplanets is motivated by the universal ways in which life could modify its planetary environment. Atmospheric gases such as oxygen and methane are promising candidates for such environmental modification due to the…
To date, the ability for observers to reveal the composition or thermal structure of an exoplanet's atmosphere has rested on two techniques: high-contrast direct imaging and time-series observations of transiting exoplanets. The former is…
Today, we know ~4330 exoplanets orbiting their host stars in ~3200 planetary systems. The diversity of these exoplanets is large, and none of the known exoplanets is a twin to any of the solar system planets, nor is any of the known…
As the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres proceeds, providing insights into atmospheric chemistry and composition, a key question is how much deeper into the planet we might be able to see from its atmospheric properties alone. For…
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…
The Milky Way Galaxy is literally teeming with exoplanets; thousands of planets have been discovered, with thousands more planet candidates identified. Terrestrial-like planets are quite common around other stars, and are expected to be…