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Related papers: Stability of Hydrides in Sub-Neptune Exoplanets wi…

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Recent discoveries of water-rich, sub-Neptunian to Neptunian-massed exoplanets with short-period orbits present a new parameter space for the study of exoplanetary dynamos. We explore the geometry of the dynamo source region within this…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-15 Bob Yunsheng Tian , Sabine Stanley

Sub-Neptunes are among the most common type of close-in planets found in our galaxy, yet their bulk composition remains largely uncertain; H-rich envelopes overlaying rocky cores, volatile-rich planets, and carbon-rich interiors all remain…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-27 Sagnick Mukherjee , Matthew C. Nixon , Luis Welbanks , James Mang , Nicholas F. Wogan , Natasha E. Batalha , Michael R. Line

The demographics of sub-Jovian planets around low-mass stars is dominated by populations of ``sub-Neptunes" and ``super-Earths", distinguished by the presence or absence of envelopes of low-molecular weight volatiles, i.e., H2, He, and H2O.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-16 Tatsuya Yoshida , Eric Gaidos

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,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-09-21 Edwin S. Kite , Bruce Fegley , Laura Schaefer , Eric Gaidos

The hydrogen and water molecules respond very differently to the collisional-radiative processes taking place in planetary atmospheres. Naturally, the question arises whether H2O-rich atmospheres are more (or less) resilient to long-term…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-04-04 A. García Muñoz , A. Asensio Ramos , A. Faure

The formation of the giant planets in our solar system, and likely a majority of giant exoplanets, is commonly explained by the accretion of nebular hydrogen and helium onto a large core of terrestrial-like composition. The fate of this…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-15 Sean Wahl , Hugh F. Wilson , Burkhard Militzer

The potential presence of a magma surface below a thick atmosphere primarily composed of hydrogen in some sub-Neptune exoplanets suggests a strong link between the interior composition and atmosphere through chemical coupling of volatile…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-22 Elspeth K. H. Lee , Aaron Werlen , Caroline Dorn

Internal redox reactions may irreversibly alter the mantle composition and volatile inventory of terrestrial and super-Earth exoplanets and affect the prospects for atmospheric observations. The global efficacy of these mechanisms, however,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-06-11 Tim Lichtenberg

With no analogues in the Solar System, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets with masses and radii intermediate between Earth and Neptune was one of the big surprises of exoplanet science. These super-Earths and sub-Neptunes likely…

Atmospheric observations of mini-Neptunes orbiting M-dwarfs are beginning to provide constraints on their chemical and thermal properties, while also providing clues about their interiors and potential surfaces. With their relatively large…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-12-09 Anjali A. A. Piette , Nikku Madhusudhan

Over the last decade, precise exoplanet transmission spectroscopy has revealed the atmospheres of dozens of exoplanets, driven largely by observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. One major discovery has been the ubiquity of…

Mildly irradiated mini-Neptunes have densities potentially consistent with them hosting substantial liquid water oceans (`Hycean' planets). The presence of CO2 and simultaneous absence of ammonia (NH3) in their atmospheres has been proposed…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-02-22 Oliver Shorttle , Sean Jordan , Harrison Nicholls , Tim Lichtenberg , Dan J. Bower

Models based on variable miscibility among hydrogen, molten silicate, and molten iron, coupled with atmospheric escape, can reproduce the observed occurrence density structure of sub-Neptunes and super-Earths in mass-radius space. The…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-01 Edward D. Young , Aaron Werlen

Understanding the surface temperature and interior structure of cold-to-temperate sub-Neptunes is critical for assessing their habitability, yet direct observations are challenging. In this study, we investigate the impact of water…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-09-05 Ziyu Huang , Xinting Yu , Shang-Min Tsai , Julianne I. Moses , Kazumasa Ohno , Joshua Krissansen-Totton , Xi Zhang , Jonathan Fortney

Sub-Neptunes with hydrogen-rich envelopes are expected to sustain long-lived magma oceans that continuously exchange volatiles with their overlying atmospheres. Capturing these interactions is key to understanding the chemical evolution and…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-03 Aaron Werlen , Edward D. Young , Hilke E. Schlichting , Caroline Dorn , Anat Shahar

We examine the possibility that icy super-Earth mass planets, formed over long time scales (0.1--1~Gyr) at large distances ($\sim$ 200--1000~AU) from their host stars, will develop massive H-rich atmospheres. Within the interior of these…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-05-01 Amit Levi , Scott J. Kenyon , Morris Podolak , Dina Prialnik

The internal composition of sub-Neptunes remains a prominent unresolved question in exoplanetary science. We present a technique to place constraints on envelope mean molecular weight that utilises observations of escaping hydrogen or…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-21 James G. Rogers , James E. Owen , Ethan Schreyer , James Kirk

Sub-Neptunes (Rp~1.25-4 REarth) remain the most commonly detected exoplanets to date. However, it remains difficult for observations to tell whether these intermediate-sized exoplanets have surfaces and where their surfaces are located.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-06-23 Xinting Yu , Julianne I. Moses , Jonathan J. Fortney , Xi Zhang

Sub-Neptunes occupy an intriguing region of planetary mass-radius space, where theoretical models of interior structure predict that they could be water-rich, where water is in steam and supercritical state. Such planets are expected to…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-12-05 Artyom Aguichine , Natalie Batalha , Jonathan J. Fortney , Nadine Nettelmann , James E. Owen , Eliza M. -R. Kempton

Data suggest that most rocky exoplanets with orbital period $p$ $<$ 100 d ("hot" rocky exoplanets) formed as gas-rich sub-Neptunes that subsequently lost most of their envelopes, but whether these rocky exoplanets still have atmospheres is…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-03-24 Edwin S. Kite , Laura Schaefer