Related papers: The Spin Zone: Synchronously and Asynchronously Ro…
Much attention has been given to the climate dynamics and habitable boundaries of synchronously rotating planets around low mass stars. However, other rotational states are possible, particularly when higher eccentricity orbits can be…
Atmospheric collapse is likely to be of fundamental importance to tidally locked rocky exoplanets but remains understudied. Here, general results on the heat transport and stability of tidally locked terrestrial-type atmospheres are…
Current observational data of exoplanets are providing increasing detail of their 3D atmospheric structures. As characterisation efforts expand in scope, the need to develop consistent 3D radiative-transfer methods becomes more pertinent as…
Planets can emit polarized thermal radiation, just like brown dwarfs. We present calculated thermal polarization signals from hot exoplanets, using an advanced radiative transfer code that fully includes all orders of scattering by gaseous…
[Abridged] The transmission of light through a planetary atmosphere can be studied as a function of altitude and wavelength using stellar or solar occultations, giving often unique constraints on the atmospheric composition. For exoplanets,…
Recent observations revealed that several extremely low-density exoplanets show featureless transmission spectra. While atmospheric aerosols are a promising explanation for both the low density and featureless spectra, there is another…
One of the great quests of astronomy is to obtain the spectrum of a terrestrial planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star, and the dominant challenge in doing so is to isolate the light of the planet from that of the star.…
Orbital phase-dependent variations in thermal emission and reflected stellar energy spectra can provide meaningful constraints on the climate states of terrestrial extrasolar planets orbiting M dwarf stars. Spatial distributions of water…
We quantify the effects of refraction in transit transmission spectroscopy on spectral absorption features and on temporal variations that could be used to obtain altitude-dependent spectra for planets orbiting stars of different stellar…
We have shown in a recent study, using 3D climate simulations, that dayside land cover has a substantial impact on the climate of a synchronously rotating temperate rocky planet such as Proxima Centauri b. Building on that result, we…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
TRAPPIST-1 e is one of a few habitable zone exoplanets that is amenable to characterization in the near term. In this study our motivations are both scientific and technical. Our technical goal is to establish a multimodel sparse sampled…
The occurrence of a planet transiting in front of its host star offers the opportunity to observe the planet's atmosphere filtering starlight. The fraction of occulted stellar flux is roughly proportional to the optically thick area of the…
Using a 3D general circulation model, we demonstrate that a confirmed rocky exoplanet and a primary observational target, TRAPPIST-1e presents an interesting case of climate bistability. We find that the atmospheric circulation on…
Atmospheric escape from close-in exoplanets is thought to be crucial in shaping observed planetary populations. Recently, significant progress has been made in observing this process in action through excess absorption in transit spectra…
The most productive tracer of exoplanetary atmospheric escape is the measurement of excess absorption in the near-infrared metastable helium triplet during transits. Atmospheric escape of a close-in planet's atmosphere plays a role in its…
Of the over 800 exoplanets detected to date, over half are on non-circular orbits, with eccentricities as high as 0.93. Such orbits lead to time-variable stellar heating, which has implications for the planet's atmospheric dynamical regime.…
We use an idealized three-dimensional general circulation model to study condensible-rich atmospheres with an ineffective cold trap on slowly rotating tidally locked terrestrial planets. In particular, we show the climate dynamics in a thin…
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…
Simulated exoplanet transmission spectra are critical for planning and interpretation of observations and to explore the sensitivity of spectral features to atmospheric thermochemical processes. We present a publicly available generic model…