Geophysical and atmospheric implications of $f$O$_{2}$-dependent melting on rocky exoplanets
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所）；Netherlands eScience Center（荷兰e科学中心）；Interuniversity Micro Electronics Centre（跨大学微电子中心）；Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院地球与行星科学系地球化学与岩石学研究所）；Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）
Mariana Sastre, Tim Lichtenberg, Laurent Soucasse, Dan J. Bower, Harrison Nicholls, Inga Kamp
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15 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics
The geochemical evolution of long-lived magma oceans is strongly regulated by volatile exchange between the molten mantle and the atmosphere. For planets inside the runaway-greenhouse limit, this coupled evolution can persist for billions of years. However, most existing studies assume Earth-like (oxidized) conditions and neglect the influence of redox state on melt thermodynamics and volatile release. We quantified how experimentally derived, oxygen-fugacity-dependent melting curves implemented within the coupled interior-atmosphere framework PROTEUS propagate into the thermal structure, melt fraction, and rheological evolution of rocky exoplanet interiors, applying this to the short-period super-Earth GJ 1132 b. We found strongly non-linear thermal responses to variations in melting curves. In volatile-poor systems, reduced melting curves promote earlier deep-mantle crystallisation relative to oxidised and Earth-like cases, favouring late-stage surface magma oceans sustained by greenhouse warming, while oxidized melting curves maintain higher melt fractions and a vertically extended magma ocean. Reduced mantles produce massive H$_2$-CO-rich atmospheres; oxidized mantles favour thinner H$_2$O-CO$_2$ envelopes. In volatile-rich systems, the interior reaches radiative equilibrium at high melt fractions, sustaining a steady-state global magma ocean in which melting curve variations do not significantly influence solidification timing. This indicates a hierarchical control: volatile inventory and surface oxygen fugacity act as the primary regulators of thermal state, while oxygen-fugacity-dependent melting relations provide a secondary modulation. These contrasting regimes produce distinct atmospheric compositions and formation timescales, offering testable spectral predictions for close-in rocky exoplanets evaluable with forthcoming JWST observations.
Progressive astronomical characterization of planet-forming disks and rocky exoplanets highlight the need for increasing interdisciplinary efforts to understand the birth and life cycle of terrestrial worlds in a unified picture. Here, we review major geophysical and geochemical processes that shape the evolution of rocky planets and their precursor planetesimals during planetary formation and early evolution, and how these map onto the astrophysical timeline and varying accretion environments of planetary growth. The evolution of the coupled core-mantle-atmosphere system of growing protoplane…
Collisions that induce melting and vaporization can have a substantial effect on the thermal and geochemical evolution of planets. However, the thermodynamics of major minerals are not well known at the extreme conditions attained during planet formation. We obtained new data at the Sandia Z Machine and use published thermodynamic data for the major mineral forsterite (Mg$_2$SiO$_4$) to calculate the specific entropy in the liquid region of the principal Hugoniot. We use our calculated specific entropy of shocked forsterite, and revised entropies for shocked silica, to determine the critical i…
Geophysical measurements can reveal the structure of icy ocean worlds and cycling of volatiles. The associated density, temperature, sound speed, and electrical conductivity of such worlds thus characterizes their habitability. To explore the variability and correlation of these parameters, and to provide tools for planning and data analyses, we develop 1-D calculations of internal structure, which use available constraints on the thermodynamics of aqueous MgSO$_4$, NaCl (as seawater), and NH$_3$, water ices, and silicate content. Limits in available thermodynamic data narrow the parameter spa…
Oxygen fugacity is a measure of rock oxidation that influences planetary structure and evolution. Most rocky bodies in the Solar System formed at oxygen fugacities approximately five orders of magnitude higher than a hydrogen-rich gas of solar composition. It is unclear whether this oxidation of rocks in the Solar System is typical among other planetary systems. We exploit the elemental abundances observed in six white dwarfs polluted by the accretion of rocky bodies to determine the fraction of oxidized iron in those extrasolar rocky bodies and therefore their oxygen fugacities. The results a…
Plate tectonics is a geophysical process currently unique to Earth, has an important role in regulating the Earth's climate, and may be better understood by identifying rocky planets outside our solar system with tectonic activity. The key criterion for whether or not plate tectonics may occur on a terrestrial planet is if the stress on a planet's lithosphere from mantle convection may overcome the lithosphere's yield stress. Although many rocky exoplanets closely orbiting their host stars have been detected, all studies to date of plate tectonics on exoplanets have neglected tidal stresses in…
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, and magma-surface composition is set by the competing effects of fractional vaporization and surface-interior exchange. We use basic models to show how surface-interior exchange is controlled by the planet's temperature, mass, and initial composition. We assume that mantle rock undergoes bulk melting to form the magma pool, and that winds flow radially away …
Nominally anhydrous minerals in rocky planet mantles can sequester oceans of water as a whole, giving a constraint on bulk water inventories. Here we predict mantle water capacities from the thermodynamically-limited solubility of water in their constituent minerals. We report the variability of mantle water capacity due to (i) host star refractory element abundances that set mineralogy, (ii) realistic mantle temperature scenarios, and (iii) planet mass. We find that planets large enough to stabilise perovskite almost unfailingly have a dry lower mantle, topped by a high-water-capacity transit…
Many stars of different spectral types with planets in the habitable zone are known to emit flares. Until now, studies that address the long-term impact of stellar flares and associated Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) assumed that the planet's interior remains unaffected by interplanetary CMEs, only considering the effect of plasma/UV interactions on the atmosphere of planets. Here, we show that the magnetic flux carried by flare-associated CMEs results in planetary interior heating by Ohmic dissipation and leads to a variety of interior--exterior interactions. We construct a physical model to s…
We ran several series of two-dimensional numerical mantle convection simulations representing in idealized form the thermochemical evolution of a Mars-like planet. In order to study the importance of compositional buoyancy of melting mantle, the models were set up in pairs of one including all thermal and compositional contributions to buoyancy and one accounting only for the thermal contributions. In several of the model pairs, single large impacts were introduced as causes of additional strong local anomalies, and their evolution in the framework of the convecting mantle was tracked. The mod…
Aims. We investigate possible driving mechanisms of volcanic activity on rocky super-Earths with masses exceeding 3-4 Mearth. Due to high gravity and pressures in the mantles of these planets, melting in deep mantle layers can be suppressed, even if the energy releae due to tidal heating and radioactive decay is substantial. Here we investigate whether a newly identified heating mechanism, namely induction heating by the star's magnetic field, can drive volcanic activity on these planets due to its unique heating pattern in the very upper part of the mantle. In this region the pressure is not …
We demonstrate that the deep volatile storage capacity of magma oceans has significant implications for the bulk composition, interior and climate state inferred from exoplanet mass and radius data. Experimental petrology provides the fundamental properties on the ability of water and melt to mix. So far, these data have been largely neglected for exoplanet mass-radius modeling. Here, we present an advanced interior model for water-rich rocky exoplanets. The new model allows us to test the effects of rock melting and the redistribution of water between magma ocean and atmosphere on calculated …
We present a series of papers dedicated to modelling the accretion and differentiation of rocky planets that form by pebble accretion within the lifetime of the protoplanetary disc. In this first paper, we focus on how the accreted ice determines the distribution of iron between the mantle (oxidized FeO and FeO$_{1.5}$) and the core (metallic Fe and FeS). We find that an initial primitive composition of ice-rich material leads, upon heating by the decay of $^{26}$Al, to extensive water flow and the formation of clay minerals inside planetesimals. Metallic iron dissolves in liquid water and pre…
Institute of Space Research, German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心空间研究所）；Astrophysics Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（NASA戈达德太空飞行中心天体物理学部）；NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies（NASA戈达德空间研究所）；Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon（里斯本大学理学院多姆·卢伊什研究所）；Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学学会地球与行星实验室）；Department of Earth Sciences, FU Berlin（柏林自由大学地球科学系）；Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Washington University（华盛顿大学地球、环境与行星科学系）；Planetary Science Institute, The Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学行星科学研究所）
The composition of the lower mantle $-$ comprising 56% of Earth's volume $-$ remains poorly constrained. Among the major elements, Mg/Si ratios ranging from $\sim$0.9$-$1.1, such as in rocky solar-system building blocks (or chondrites), to $\sim$1.2$-$1.3, such as in upper-mantle rocks (or pyrolite), have been proposed. Geophysical evidence for subducted lithosphere deep in the mantle has been interpreted in terms of efficient mixing and thus homogeneous Mg/Si across most of the mantle. However, previous models did not consider the effects of variable Mg/Si on the viscosity and mixing efficien…
Rocky planetesimals in the early solar system melted internally and evolved chemically due to radiogenic heating from Al-26. Here we quantify the parametric controls on magma genesis and transport using a coupled petrological and fluid mechanical model of reactive two-phase flow. We find the mean grain size of silicate minerals to be a key control on magma ascent. For grain sizes larger than $\approx$ 1 mm, melt segregation produces distinct radial structure and chemical stratification. This stratification is most pronounced for bodies formed at around 1 Myr after formation of Ca,Al-rich inclu…
The analyses of Titan's gravity field obtained by Cassini space mission suggest the presence of an internal ocean beneath its icy surface. The characterization of the geophysical parameters of the icy shell and the ocean is important to constrain the evolution models of Titan. The knowledge of the librations, that are periodic oscillations around a uniform rotational motion, can bring piece of information on the interior parameters. The objective of this paper is to study the librational response in longitude from an analytical approach for Titan composed of a deep atmosphere, an elastic icy s…
During their formation and early evolution, rocky planets undergo multiple global melting events due to accretionary collisions with other protoplanets. The detection and characterization of their post-collision afterglows (magma oceans) can yield important clues about the origin and evolution of the solar and extrasolar planet population. Here, we quantitatively assess the observational prospects to detect the radiative signature of forming planets covered by such collision-induced magma oceans in nearby young stellar associations with future direct imaging facilities. We have compared perfor…
Thermal Evolution of Lava Planets Across System Ages: Predictions for Hell of a Survey
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所）；Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学天体物理中心及物理与天文学系）；School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学物理与天文学院）；Center for Star and Planet Formation, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学全球研究所恒星与行星形成中心）；Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；Department of Physics, University of Warwick（华威大学物理系）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University（约克大学物理与天文学系）；Trottier Space Institute, McGill University（麦吉尔大学特罗蒂尔空间研究所）
Aims: The secondary atmospheres of terrestrial planets form and evolve as a consequence of interaction with the interior over geological time. We aim to quantify the influence of planetary bulk composition on the interior--atmosphere evolution for Earth-sized terrestrial planets to aid in the interpretation of future observations of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres. Methods: We used a geochemical model to determine the major-element composition of planetary interiors (MgO, FeO, and SiO2) following the crystallization of a magma ocean after planet formation, predicting a compositional profile …
Coupled atmospHere Interior modeL Intercomparison (CHILI). I. Evolutionary Modelling -- Primordial Magma Oceans of Earth and Venus
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）；University of Washington（华盛顿大学）；Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan（日本国立天文台）；Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Versailles（凡尔赛数学实验室）；Université Paris Cité, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS（巴黎西岱大学，巴黎地球物理学院，法国国家科学研究中心）；University of Central Florida（中佛罗里达大学）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；SRON Netherlands Research Organisation（荷兰研究组织SRON）；Leiden Observatory, University of Leiden（莱顿大学莱登天文台）；School of Physics, University of Bristol（布里斯托大学物理学院）；Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin（柏林自由大学地质科学研究所）
