Related papers: Water on Hot Rocky Exoplanets
Recent studies have shown that large exomoons can form in the accretion disks around super-Jovian extrasolar planets. These planets are abundant at about 1 AU from Sun-like stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of…
Some exoplanets have much higher densities than expected from stellar abundances of planet-forming elements. There are two theories - metal-rich formation hypothesis and naked core hypothesis - that explain how formation and evolution can…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
The atmospheres of hot rocky exoplanets (HREs), should they persist, are products of interactions with underlying magma oceans. Spectra collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hint at a CO/CO$_2$-rich atmosphere on the HRE 55…
The atmospheric chemical composition of a hot Jupiter can lead to insights into where in its natal protoplanetary disk it formed and its subsequent migration pathway. We use a 1-D chemical kinetics code to compute a suite of models across a…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
GJ 1132 b is a nearby Earth-sized exoplanet transiting an M dwarf, and is amongst the most highly characterizable small exoplanets currently known. In this paper we study the interaction of a magma ocean with a water-rich atmosphere on GJ…
Atmospheric chemistry models have shown molecular oxygen can build up in CO2-dominated atmospheres on potentially habitable exoplanets without an input of life. Existing models typically assume a surface pressure of 1 bar. Here we present…
Relatively long-period nonsynchronized planets---such as warm Jupiters---potentially retain the primordial rotation, eccentricity, and obliquity that might encapsulate information on planetary climate and formation processes. To date, there…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
The host star metallicity provide a measure of the conditions in protoplanetary disks at the time of planet formation. Using a sample of over 20,000 Kepler stars with spectroscopic metallicities from the LAMOST survey, we explore how the…
We present a large ensemble of simulations of an Earth-like world with increasing insolation and rotation rate. Unlike previous work utilizing idealized aquaplanet configurations we focus our simulations on modern Earth-like topography. The…
During the post-main sequence phase of stellar evolution the orbital distance of the habitable zone, which allows for liquid surface water on terrestrial planets, moves out past the system's original frost line, providing an opportunity for…
Earth-like planets orbiting M-dwarf stars, M-Earths, are currently the best targets to search for signatures of life. Life as we know it requires water. The habitability of M-Earths is jeopardized by water loss to space: high flux from…
We investigate the chemical stability of CO2-dominated atmospheres of desiccated M dwarf terrestrial exoplanets using a 1-dimensional photochemical model. Around Sun-like stars, CO2 photolysis by Far-UV (FUV) radiation is balanced by…
Understanding the set of conditions that allow rocky planets to have liquid water on their surface -- in the form of lakes, seas or oceans -- is a major scientific step to determine the fraction of planets potentially suitable for the…
This article presents a review on the observations and theoretical modeling of the evaporation of extrasolar planets. The observations and the resulting constraints on the upper atmosphere (thermosphere and exosphere) of the "hot-Jupiters".…
Terrestrial-like exoplanets may obtain atmospheres from three primary sources: Capture of nebular gases, degassing during accretion, and degassing from subsequent tectonic activity. Here we model degassing during accretion to estimate the…
Strong atmospheric escape has been detected in several close-in exoplanets. As these planets consist mostly of hydrogen, observations in hydrogen lines, such as Ly-alpha and H-alpha, are powerful diagnostics of escape. Here, we simulate the…
Models of planet formation have shown that giant planets have a large impact on the number, masses and orbits of terrestrial planets that form. In addition, they play an important role in delivering volatiles from material that formed…