Related papers: Cross-sections for heavy atmospheres: H$_2$O conti…
Exoplanets that reside close to their host stars, and therefore receive substantial amounts of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation, are prone to suffer from strong atmospheric escape. This can lead to the creation of an envelope of escaping gas…
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D. With the JWST and future space telescopes such as Ariel, we will be able to obtain…
Transmission spectroscopy provides a window to study exoplanetary atmospheres, but that window is fogged by clouds and hazes. Clouds and haze introduce a degeneracy between the strength of gaseous absorption features and planetary physical…
Modeling the atmospheres of exoplanets is fundamental to understanding their atmospheric physics and chemical processes. While one-dimensional (1D) atmospheric models with 1D radiative transfer (RT) have been widely used, advances in…
Some super Earths and mini Neptunes will likely have thick atmospheres that are not H2-dominated. We have developed a photochemistry-thermochemistry kinetic-transport model for exploring the compositions of thick atmospheres on super Earths…
Transiting planets provide unique opportunities for the atmospheric characterization of exoplanets as they can reveal composition and the temperature structures at the day-night terminator regions in planetary atmospheres, and help…
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…
The nearby star GJ 1214 hosts a planet intermediate in radius and mass between Earth and Neptune, resulting in some uncertainty as to its nature. We have observed this planet, GJ 1214b, during transit with the high-resolution, near-infrared…
Ultra-hot Jupiters are perfect targets for transmission spectroscopy. However, their atmospheres feature strong spatial variations in temperature, chemistry, dynamics, cloud coverage, and scale height. This makes transit observations at…
We present new calculations of transit spectra of super-Earths that allow for atmospheres with arbitrary proportions of common molecular species and haze. We test this method with generic spectra, reproducing the expected systematics and…
One of the most outstanding issues in exoplanet characterization is understanding the prevalence of obscuring clouds and hazes in their atmospheres. The ability to predict the presence of clouds/hazes a priori is an important goal when…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
The atmospheric composition of transiting exoplanets can be characterized during transit by spectroscopy. For the transit of an Earth twin, models predict that biogenic $O_2$ and $O_3$ should be detectable, as well as water vapour, a…
The planned launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will herald a new era of exoplanet spectroscopy. JWST will be the first telescope sensitive enough to potentially characterize terrestrial planets from their transmission spectra.…
We show that a consistent fit to observed secondary eclipse data for several strongly irradiated transiting planets demands a temperature inversion (stratosphere) at altitude. Such a thermal inversion significantly influences the…
Transmission spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets is a potential tool for habitability screening. Transiting planets are present-day "Rosetta Stones" for understanding extrasolar planets because they offer the possibility to characterize…
Our brains are hardwired for pattern recognition as correlations are useful for predicting and understanding nature. As more exoplanet atmospheres are being characterized with JWST, we are starting to unveil their properties on a population…
Transmission spectroscopy is one of the most successful methods of learning about exoplanet atmospheres. The process of retrievals using transmission spectroscopy consists of creating numerous forward models and comparing them to…
Rocky exoplanets are faint and difficult to observe due to their small size and low brightness compared to their host star. Despite this, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has allowed us new methods and opportunities to study them.…
The temperature of an atmosphere decreases with increasing altitude, unless a shortwave absorber exists that causes a temperature inversion. Ozone plays this role in the Earth`s atmosphere. In the atmospheres of highly irradiated…