Related papers: Evolution of Mercury's Earliest Atmosphere
Interactions between magma oceans and overlying atmospheres on young rocky planets leads to an evolving feedback of outgassing, greenhouse forcing, and mantle melt fraction. Previous studies have predominantly focused on the solidification…
Volatile molecules containing hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen are key components of planetary atmospheres. In the pebble accretion model for rocky planet formation, these volatile species are accreted during the main planetary formation…
Warm Neptune- and sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets in orbits smaller than Mercury's are thought to have experienced extensive atmospheric evolution. Here we propose that a potential outcome of this atmospheric evolution is the formation of…
The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…
We provide estimates of atmospheric pressure and surface composition on short-period rocky exoplanets with dayside magma pools and silicate vapor atmospheres. Atmospheric pressure tends toward vapor-pressure equilibrium with surface magma,…
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…
Hydrogen in rocky planet atmospheres has been invoked in arguments for extending the habitable zone via N2-H2 and CO2-H2 greenhouse warming, and providing atmospheric conditions suitable for efficient production of prebiotic molecules. On…
Updated formation and structure models of Jupiter predict a metal-poor envelope. This is at odds with the two to three times solar metallicity measured by the Galileo probe. Additionally, Juno data imply that water and ammonia are enriched.…
We employ planetary evolution modeling to reproduce the MR distribution of the 198 so far detected planets with mass and radius measured to the <45% and <15% level, respectively, and less massive than 108Me. We simultaneously account for…
The deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H or 2H/1H) ratio of Martian atmospheric water (~6x standard mean ocean water, SMOW) is higher than that of known sources, requiring planetary enrichment. A recent measurement by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory…
Recent exoplanet statistics indicate that photo-evaporation has a great impact on the mass and bulk composition of close-in low-mass planets. While there are many studies addressing photo-evaporation of hydrogen-rich or water-rich…
The evolution of exoplanetary atmospheres is strongly influenced by atmospheric escape, particularly for close-in planets. Fractionation during atmospheric loss can preferentially remove lighter elements such as hydrogen, while retaining…
The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and…
Post-Noachian Martian paleochannels indicate the existence of liquid water on the surface of Mars after about 3.5 Gya (Irwin et al., 2015; Palucis et al., 2016). In order to explore the effects of variations in CO$_{2}$ partial pressure and…
By considering martian-like planetary embryos inside the habitable zone of solar-like stars we study the behavior of the hydrodynamic atmospheric escape of hydrogen for small values of the Jeans escape parameter $\beta < 3$, near the base…
Terrestrial planets currently in the habitable zones around M dwarfs likely experienced a long-term runaway greenhouse condition because of a slow decline in host-stellar luminosity in its pre-main sequence phase. Accordingly, they might…
In this work we aim to determine the atmospheric survivability of the TRAPPIST-1 planets by modelling the response of the upper atmosphere to incoming stellar high-energy radiation. Through this case study, we also aim to learn more about…
Context: The thermal and chemical structures of the upper atmospheres of planets crucially influence losses to space and must be understood to constrain the effects of losses on atmospheric evolution. Aims: We develop a 1D first-principles…
The impact heat accumulated during the late stage of planetary accretion can melt a significant part or even the entire mantle of a terrestrial body, giving rise to a global magma ocean. [...] Assuming fractional crystallization of the…