In Situ Formation of Super-Earth/Sub-Neptune Driven by the Planetary Rotation

Kepler’s observation shows that many of the detected planets are super-Earths. They are inside a range of critical masses overlapping the core masses (2–20 M ⊕), which would trigger the runaway accretion and develop the gas giants. Thus, super-Earths/sub-Neptunes can be formed by restraining runaway growth of gaseous envelopes. We assess the effect of planetary rotation in delaying the mass growth. The centrifugal force, induced by spin, will offset a part of the gravitational force and deform the planet. Tracking the change in structure, we find that the temperature at the radiative–convective boundary (RCB) is approximate to the boundary temperature. Since rotation reduces the radiation energy densities in the convective and radiative layers, RCB will penetrate deeper. The cooling luminosity would decrease. Under this condition, the evolutionary timescale can exceed the disk lifetime (10 Myr), and a super-Earth/sub-Neptune could be formed after undergoing additional mass-loss processes. In the dusty atmosphere, even a lower angular velocity can also promote a super-Earth/sub-Neptune forming. Therefore, we conclude that rotation can slow down the planet’s cooling and then promote a super-Earth/sub-Neptune forming.

New Perspectives on the Exoplanet Radius Gap from a Mathematica Tool and Visualized Water Equation of State

Recent astronomical observations obtained with the Kepler and TESS missions and their related ground-based follow-ups revealed an abundance of exoplanets with a size intermediate between Earth and Neptune (1 R ⊕ ≤ R ≤ 4 R ⊕). A low occurrence rate of planets has been identified at around twice the size of Earth (2 × R ⊕), known as the exoplanet radius gap or radius valley. We explore the geometry of this gap in the mass–radius diagram, with the help of a Mathematica plotting tool developed with the capability of manipulating exoplanet data in multidimensional parameter space, and with the help of visualized water equations of state in the temperature–density (T–ρ) graph and the entropy–pressure (s–P) graph. We show that the radius valley can be explained by a compositional difference between smaller, predominantly rocky planets (<2 × R ⊕) and larger planets (>2 × R ⊕) that exhibit greater compositional diversity including cosmic ices (water, ammonia, methane, etc.) and gaseous envelopes. In particular, among the larger planets (>2 × R ⊕), when viewed from the perspective of planet equilibrium temperature (T eq), the hot ones (T eq ≳ 900 K) are consistent with ice-dominated composition without significant gaseous envelopes, while the cold ones (T eq ≲ 900 K) have more diverse compositions, including various amounts of gaseous envelopes.

Evolution of Earth-like extended exospheres orbiting solar-like stars

Recent observations of the Earth’s exosphere revealed the presence of an extended hydrogenic component that could reach distances beyond 40 planetary radii. Detection of similar extended exospheres around Earth-like exoplanets could reveal crucial facts in terms of habitability. The presence of these rarified hydrogen envelopes is extremely dependent of the planetary environment, dominated by the ionizing radiation and plasma winds coming from the host star. Radiation and fast wind particles ionize the uppermost layers of planetary atmospheres, especially for planets orbiting active, young stars. The survival of the produced ions in the exosphere of such these planets is subject to the action of the magnetized stellar winds, particularly for unmagnetized bodies. In order to address these star-planet interactions, we have carried out numerical 2.5D ideal MHD simulations using the PLUTO code to study the dynamical evolution of tenuous, hydrogen-rich, Earth-like extended exospheres for an unmagnetized planet, at different stellar evolutionary stages: from a very young, solar-like star of 0.1 Gyr to a 5.0 Gyr star. For each star-planet configuration, we show that the morphology of extended Earth-like hydrogen exospheres is strongly dependent of the incident stellar winds and the produced ions present in these gaseous envelopes, showing that the ionized component of Earth-like exospheres is quickly swept by the stellar winds of young stars, leading to large bow shock formation for later stellar ages.

Are sub-Neptunes irradiated ocean planets?

&lt;p&gt;Small planets (1-3.9 Rearth) constitute more than half of the inventory of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far. Smaller planets are sufficiently dense to be rocky, but those with radii larger than 1.6 Rearth are thought to display in many cases hydrogen/helium gaseous envelopes up to 30% of the planetary mass. These low-mass planets are highly irradiated and the question of their origin, evolution, and possible links remains open. Here we show that close-in ocean planets affected by greenhouse effect display hydrospheres in supercritical state, which generate inflated atmospheres without invoking the presence of large hydrogen/helium gaseous envelopes. We present a new set of mass-radius relationships for ocean planets with different compositions and different equilibrium temperatures, which are found to be well adapted to low-density sub-Neptune planets. Our model suggests that super-Earths and water-rich sub-Neptunes could belong to the same family of planets, i.e. hydrogen/helium-free planets, with differences between their interiors simply resulting from the variation in the water content.&lt;span class=&quot;Apple-converted-space&quot;&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Meteorite Mineralogy

Meteorites are rocks from outer space that reach the Earth; more than 60,000 have been collected. They are derived mainly from asteroids; a few hundred each are from the Moon and Mars; some micrometeorites derive from comets. By mid 2020, about 470 minerals had been identified in meteorites. In addition to having characteristic petrologic and geochemical properties, each meteorite group has a distinctive set of pre-terrestrial minerals that reflect the myriad processes that the meteorites and their components experienced. These processes include condensation in gaseous envelopes around evolved stars, crystallization in chondrule melts, crystallization in metallic cores, parent-body aqueous alteration, and shock metamorphism. Chondrites are the most abundant meteorites; the major components within them include chondrules, refractory inclusions, opaque assemblages, and fine-grained silicate-rich matrix material. The least-metamorphosed chondrites preserve minerals inherited from the solar nebula such as olivine, enstatite, metallic Fe-Ni, and refractory phases. Other minerals in chondrites formed on their parent asteroids during thermal metamorphism (such as chromite, plagioclase and phosphate), aqueous alteration (such as magnetite and phyllosilicates) and shock metamorphism (such as ringwoodite and majorite). Differentiated meteorites contain minerals formed by crystallization from magmas; these phases include olivine, orthopyroxene, Ca-plagioclase, Ca-pyroxene, metallic Fe-Ni and sulfide. Meteorites also contain minerals formed during passage through the Earth’s atmosphere and via terrestrial weathering after reaching the surface. Whereas some minerals form only by a single process (e.g., by high-pressure shock metamorphism or terrestrial weathering of a primary phase), other meteoritic minerals can form by several different processes, including condensation, crystallization from melts, thermal metamorphism, and aqueous alteration.

X-ray irradiation and evaporation of the four young planets around V1298 Tau

ABSTRACT Planets around young stars are thought to undergo atmospheric evaporation due to the high magnetic activity of the host stars. Here we report on X-ray observations of V1298 Tau, a young star with four transiting exoplanets. We use X-ray observations of the host star with Chandra and ROSAT to measure the current high-energy irradiation level of the planets and employ a model for the stellar activity evolution together with exoplanetary mass-loss to estimate the possible evolution of the planets. We find that V1298 Tau is X-ray bright with log LX [erg s−1] = 30.1 and has a mean coronal temperature of ≈9 MK. This places the star amongst the more X-ray luminous ones at this stellar age. We estimate the radiation-driven mass-loss of the exoplanets and find that it depends sensitively on the possible evolutionary spin-down tracks of the star as well as on the current planetary densities. Assuming the planets are of low density due to their youth, we find that the innermost two planets can lose significant parts of their gaseous envelopes and could be evaporated down to their rocky cores depending on the stellar spin evolution. However, if the planets are heavier and follow the mass–radius relation of older planets, then even in the highest XUV irradiation scenario none of the planets is expected to cross the radius gap into the rocky regime until the system reaches an age of 5 Gyr.

Formation of compact systems of super-Earths via dynamical instabilities and giant impacts

ABSTRACT The NASA’s Kepler mission discovered ∼700 planets in multiplanet systems containing three or more transiting bodies, many of which are super-Earths and mini-Neptunes in compact configurations. Using N-body simulations, we examine the in situ, final stage assembly of multiplanet systems via the collisional accretion of protoplanets. Our initial conditions are constructed using a subset of the Kepler five-planet systems as templates. Two different prescriptions for treating planetary collisions are adopted. The simulations address numerous questions: Do the results depend on the accretion prescription?; do the resulting systems resemble the Kepler systems, and do they reproduce the observed distribution of planetary multiplicities when synthetically observed?; do collisions lead to significant modification of protoplanet compositions, or to stripping of gaseous envelopes?; do the eccentricity distributions agree with those inferred for the Kepler planets? We find that the accretion prescription is unimportant in determining the outcomes. The final planetary systems look broadly similar to the Kepler templates adopted, but the observed distributions of planetary multiplicities or eccentricities are not reproduced, because scattering does not excite the systems sufficiently. In addition, we find that ∼1 per cent of our final systems contain a co-orbital planet pair in horseshoe or tadpole orbits. Post-processing the collision outcomes suggests that they would not significantly change the ice fractions of initially ice-rich protoplanets, but significant stripping of gaseous envelopes appears likely. Hence, it may be difficult to reconcile the observation that many low-mass Kepler planets have H/He envelopes with an in situ formation scenario that involves giant impacts after dispersal of the gas disc.

Exoplanets: Atmospheres of Hot Jupiters

The history of exoplanetary atmospheres studies is strongly based on the observations and investigations of the gaseous envelopes of hot Jupiters—exoplanet gas giants that have masses comparable to the mass of Jupiter and orbital semi-major axes shorter than 0.1 AU. The first exoplanet around a solar-type star was a hot Jupiter discovered in 1995. Researchers found an object that had completely atypical parameters compared to planets known in the solar system. According to their estimates, the object might have a mass about a half of the Jovian mass and a very short orbital period (four days), which means that it has an orbit roughly corresponding to the orbit of Mercury. Later, many similar objects were discovered near different stars, and they acquired a common name—hot Jupiters. It is still unclear what the mechanism is for their origin, because generally accepted theories of planetary evolution predict the formation of giant planets only at large orbital distances, where they can accrete enough matter before the protoplanetary disc disappears. If this is true, before arriving at such low orbits, hot Jupiters might have a long migration path, caused by interactions with other massive planets and/or with the gaseous disc. In favor of this model is the discovery of many hot Jupiters in elliptical and highly inclined orbits, but on the other hand several observed hot Jupiters have circular orbits with low inclination. An alternative hypothesis is that the cores of future hot Jupiters are super-Earths that may later intercept matter from the protoplanetary disk falling on the star. The scientific interest in hot Jupiters has two aspects. The first is the peculiarity of these objects: they have no analogues in the solar system. The second is that, until recently, only for hot Jupiters was it possible to obtain observational characteristics of their atmospheres. Many of the known hot Jupiters are eclipsing their host stars, so, from their light curve and spectral data obtained during an eclipse, it became possible to obtain information about their shape and their atmospheric composition. Thus it is possible to conclude that hot Jupiters are a common type of exoplanet, having no analogues in the solar system. Many aspects of their evolution and internal structure remain unclear. Being very close to their host stars, hot Jupiters must interact with the stellar wind and stellar magnetic field, as well as with stellar flares and coronal mass ejections, allowing researchers to gather information about them. According to UV observations, at least a fraction of hot Jupiters have extended gaseous envelopes, extending far beyond of their upper atmospheres. The envelopes are observable with current astronomical instruments, so it is possible to develop their astrophysical models. The history of hot Jupiter atmosphere studies during the past 20 years and the current status of modern theories describing the extended envelopes of hot Jupiters are excellent examples of the progress in understanding planetary atmospheres formation and evolution both in the solar system and in the extrasolar planetary systems.