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arXiv 2007.06562astro-ph.EP
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云对甲烷耗尽的作用和水在辐射的系外行星的透射光谱中的优势

The role of clouds on the depletion of methane and water dominance in the transmission spectra of irradiated exoplanets

Karan Molaverdikhani, Thomas Henning, Paul Mollière

摘要:

观测结果表明,在大多数观测到的系外行星大气中,水含量丰富,甲烷含量不足。我们隔离大气过程的影响,以调查可能的原因。在此之前,我们研究了有效温度,表面重力,金属丰度,碳氧比和恒星类型假设无云热化学平衡和不平衡化学的影响。然而,在这些假设下,甲烷仍然是一个持久的光谱特征,在一定的参数空间,甲烷谷的系外行星的透射光谱。在这项工作中,我们研究了云在这一领域的作用,我们发现云以两种直接的方式改变了甲烷的光谱外观:1)通过加热较冷行星的光球,2)通过模糊分子特征。云的存在也间接地影响甲烷特征:1)云加热导致冷凝物的更多蒸发,因此释放额外的氧气,导致较冷的贫碳系外行星的水占主导地位的光谱,以及2)HCN/CO的产生导致这些分子抑制耗尽的甲烷特征。HCN/CO的存在和甲烷的缺乏可能是热系外行星上云形成的迹象。云加热也会消耗氨。因此,甲烷和氨的同时消耗并不是光化学过程所独有的。我们认为,甲烷探测的最佳目标可能是大规模但较小的行星,其温度约为1450 K,绕较冷的恒星运行。我们还构建了斯皮策合成彩色地图,并发现云可以解释IRAC通道1和2的一些高对比度观测。

英文摘要:

Observations suggest an abundance of water and paucity of methane in the majority of observed exoplanetary atmospheres. We isolate the effect of atmospheric processes to investigate possible causes. Previously, we studied the effect of effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity, carbon-to-oxygen ratio, and stellar type assuming cloud-free thermochemical equilibrium and disequilibrium chemistry. However, under these assumptions, methane remains a persisting spectral feature in the transmission spectra of exoplanets over a certain parameter space, the Methane Valley. In this work we investigate the role of clouds on this domain and we find that clouds change the spectral appearance of methane in two direct ways: 1) by heating-up the photosphere of colder planets, and 2) by obscuring molecular features. The presence of clouds also affects methane features indirectly: 1) cloud heating results in more evaporation of condensates and hence releases additional oxygen, causing water dominated spectra of colder carbon-poor exoplanets, and 2) HCN/CO production results in a suppression of depleted methane features by these molecules. The presence of HCN/CO and a lack of methane could be an indication of cloud formation on hot exoplanets. Cloud heating can also deplete ammonia. Therefore, a simultaneous depletion of methane and ammonia is not unique to photochemical processes. We propose that the best targets for methane detection are likely to be massive but smaller planets with a temperature around 1450 K orbiting colder stars. We also construct Spitzer synthetic color-maps and find that clouds can explain some of the high contrast observations by IRAC's channel 1 and 2.

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