Related papers: Higher Water Loss on Earth-like Exoplanets in Ecce…

Recently there has been tremendous increase in the number of identified extra-solar planetary systems. Our understanding of their formation is tied to exoplanet internal structure models, which rely upon equations of state of light elements…

Thermal light-curve analysis is a powerful approach to probe the thermal structures of exoplanetary atmospheres, which are greatly influenced by the planetary obliquity and eccentricity. Here we investigate the thermal light curves of…

Terrestrial exoplanets in the canonical habitable zone may have a variety of initial water fractions due to random volatile delivery by planetesimals. If the total planetary water complement is high, the entire surface may be covered in…

Planets with masses between 0.1 - 10 M_earth are believed to host dense atmospheres. These atmospheres can play an important role on the planet's spin evolution, since thermal atmospheric tides, driven by the host star, may counterbalance…

Water worlds have been hypothesized as an alternative to photo-evaporation in order to explain the gap in the radius distribution of Kepler exoplanets. We explore water worlds within the framework of a joint mass-radius-period distribution…

Many habitable zone exoplanets are expected to form with water mass fractions higher than that of the Earth. For rocky exoplanets with 10-1000x Earth's H2O but without H2, we model the multi-Gyr evolution of ocean temperature and chemistry,…

Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…

The water abundance in a planetary atmosphere provides a key constraint on the planet's primordial origins because water ice is expected to play an important role in the core accretion model of planet formation. However, the water content…

Recently discovered exoplanets on close-in orbits should have surface temperatures of 100's to 1000's of K. They are likely tidally locked and synchronously rotating around their parent stars and, if an atmosphere is absent, have surface…

We present a three-species multi-fluid MHD model (H$^+$, H$_2$O$^+$ and e$^-$), endowed with the requisite atmospheric chemistry, that is capable of accurately quantifying the magnitude of water ion losses from exoplanets. We apply this…

Motivated by the important role of the ocean in the Earth climate system, here we investigate possible scenarios of ocean circulations on exoplanets using a one-layer shallow water ocean model. Specifically, we investigate how planetary…

Many parameters constraining the spectral appearance of exoplanets are still poorly understood. We therefore study the properties of irradiated exoplanet atmospheres over a wide parameter range including metallicity, C/O ratio and host…

Exoplanet habitability is traditionally assessed by comparing a planet's semi-major axis to the location of its host star's "habitable zone," the shell around a star for which Earth-like planets can possess liquid surface water. The Kepler…

Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…

In the study of planetary habitability and terrestrial atmospheric evolution, the divergence of surface conditions for Venus and Earth remains an area of active research. Among the intrinsic and external influences on the Venusian climate…

Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…

The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5…

With the rapid developments in the exoplanet field, more and more terrestrial exoplanets are being detected. Characterising their atmospheres using transit observations will become a key datum in the quest for detecting an Earth-like…

Water-rich exoplanet is a type of terrestrial planet that is water-rich and its ocean depth can reach tens of to hundreds of kilo-meters with no exposed continents. Due to the lack of exposed continents, neither western boundary current nor…

Terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones are ubiquitous. It is, however, unknown which have Earth-like or Venus-like climates. Distinguishing different planet-types is crucial for determining whether a planet could be habitable. We…