Related papers: Reassessing Sub-Neptune Structure, Radii, and Ther…
Recent structure models of Jupiter suggest the existence of an extended region in the deep interior with a high heavy element abundance, referred to as a dilute core. This finding has led to increased interest in modelling the formation and…
The pathway to forming the iron-rich planet Mercury remains mysterious. Mercury's core makes up 70% of the planetary mass, which implies a significant enrichment of iron relative to silicates, while its mantle is strongly depleted in…
To aid in the physical interpretation of planetary radii constrained through observations of transiting planets, or eventually direct detections, we compute model radii of pure hydrogen-helium, water, rock, and iron planets, along with…
The long-term evolution of hydrogen-dominated atmospheres of sub-Neptune-like planets is mostly controlled by two factors: a slow dissipation of the gravitational energy acquired at the formation (known as thermal evolution) and atmospheric…
Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope has enabled detailed spectroscopic characterization of sub-Neptune atmospheres. With detections of carbon- and oxygen-bearing species such as CO, CO$_2$, CH$_4$, and H$_2$O, a central question is…
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.…
The sub-Neptune planets have no solar system analogues, and their low bulk densities suggest thick atmospheres containing degenerate quantities of volatiles and H/He, surrounding cores of unknown sizes. Measurements of their atmospheric…
We present a thermal evolution model coupled with a Henyey solver to study the circumstances under which a rocky planet could potentially host a dynamo in its liquid iron core and/or magma ocean. We calculate the evolution of planet thermal…
The recent JWST detections of carbon-bearing molecules in a habitable-zone sub-Neptune have opened a new era in the study of low-mass exoplanets. The sub-Neptune regime spans a wide diversity of planetary interiors and atmospheres not…
Sub-Neptunes represent the largest exoplanet demographic, yet their bulk compositions remain poorly understood. Recent studies suggested that only very cold planets, such as Uranus and Neptune, could experience stratification of volatiles…
Planets intermediate in size between the Earth and Neptune, and orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury does the Sun, are the most common type of planet revealed by exoplanet surveys over the last quarter century. Results from…
Transiting planet surveys like Kepler have provided a wealth of information on the distribution of planetary radii, particularly for the new populations of super-Earth and sub-Neptune sized planets. In order to aid in the physical…
Exoplanets with masses similar to that of Earth have recently been discovered in extrasolar systems. A first order question for understanding their dynamics is to know whether they possess Earth like liquid metallic cores. However, the iron…
The thermal evolution and interior structure of giant exoplanets are sensitive to the treatment of radiative opacity. At temperatures of ~2000 K, depletion of alkali metals can create a window of reduced opacity, potentially giving rise to…
The currently available, detailed properties (e.g., isotopic ratios) of solar system planets may provide guides for constructing better approaches of exoplanet characterization. With this motivation, we explore how the measured values of…
Correlations between the inner small planets and cold giants encodes the formation and evolution of planetary systems. It remains unclear if the correlation differs on the two sides of the radius valley. In this work, we compute the…
The population of small, close-in exoplanets is bifurcated into super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. We calculate physically motivated mass-radius relations for sub-Neptunes, with rocky cores and H/He dominated atmospheres, accounting for their…
During their formation, planets form large, hot atmospheres due to the ongoing accretion of solids. It has been customary to assume that all solids end up at the center constituting a "core" of refractory materials, whereas the envelope…
There have been many proposed explanations for the larger-than-expected radii of some transiting hot Jupiters, including either stellar or orbital energy deposition deep in the atmosphere or deep in the interior. In this paper, we explore…
We present a new planetary structure/thermal evolution model, designed for use in problems that couple orbital dynamics with planetary structure. We first benchmark our structural/thermal evolution calculations against the \texttt{MESA}…