Ariel planetary interiors White Paper

Helled, Ravit; Werner, Stéphanie C.; Dorn, Caroline; Guillot, T.; Ikoma, Masahiro; Itō, Yūichi; Kama, M.; Lichtenberg, Tim; Miguel, Yamila; Shorttle, Oliver; Tackley, P. J.; Valencia, Diana; Vazan, Allona

doi:10.1007/s10686-021-09739-3

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 172 publications

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“…Determining their atmospheric and bulk compositions is particularly important: they can be compared with theoretical predictions and be used to constrain formation and evolution pathways (e.g. Guillot et al 2006;Mousis et al 2009;Johansen & Lambrechts 2017;Hasegawa et al 2018;Ginzburg & Chiang 2020;Shibata et al 2020;Helled et al 2022). However, the planetary bulk composition cannot be directly measured and has to be inferred with theoretical models from mass-radius measurements and stellar ages (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a new era in giant exoplanet characterisation

Müller

Helled

2022

A&A

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Determining the composition of giant exoplanets is crucial for understanding their origin and evolution. However, planetary bulk composition is not measured directly but must be deduced from a combination of mass-radius measurements, knowledge of the planetary age and evolution simulations. Accurate determinations of stellar ages, mass-radius measurements, and atmospheric compositions from upcoming missions can significantly improve the determination of the heavy-element mass in giant planets. In this paper we first demonstrate the importance of an accurate age measurement, as expected from Plato, in constraining planetary properties. Welldetermined stellar ages can reduce the bulk-metallicity uncertainty by up to a factor of two. We next infer the bulk metallicity of warm giants from the Ariel mission reference sample and identify the Ariel high-priority targets for which a measured atmospheric metallicity can clearly break the degeneracy in the inferred composition. We show that knowledge of the atmospheric metallicity can broadly reduce the bulk-metallicity uncertainty by a factor of four to eight. We conclude that accurate age determinations from Plato and atmospheric measurements by Ariel and the James Webb Space Telescope will play a key role in revealing the composition of giant exoplanets.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a new era in giant exoplanet characterisation

Müller

Helled

2022

A&A

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“…With the increased precision of mass and radius measurements of planets, it become possible to characterize the interiors and bulk composition of low-mass exoplanets (Helled et al, 2021, Nettelmann & Valencia, 2021. Several attempts have been made in the last years trying to link the composition of low-mass planets and their host stars.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Composition of super-Earths, super-Mercuries, and their host stars

Adibekyan

Santos

Dorn

et al. 2021

ComBAO

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Because of their common origin, it was assumed that the composition of planet building blocks should, to a first order, correlate with stellar atmospheric composition, especially for refractory elements. In fact, information on the relative abundance of refractory and major rock-forming elements such as Fe, Mg, Si has been commonly used to improve interior estimates for terrestrial planets. Recently Adibekyan et al. (2021) presented evidence of a tight chemical link between rocky planets and their host stars. In this study we add six recently discovered exoplanets to the sample of Adibekyan et al and re-evaluate their findings in light of these new data. We confirm that i) iron-mass fraction of rocky exoplanets correlates (but not a 1:1 relationship) with the composition of their host stars, ii) on average the iron-mass fraction of planets is higher than that of the primordial f star iron , iii) super-Mercuries are formed in disks with high iron content. Based on these results we conclude that disk-chemistry and planet formation processes play an important role in the composition, formation, and evolution of super-Earths and super-Mercuries.

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“…At the moment, the presence and speciation of atmospheres on hot rocky exoplanets is contentious (Swain et al 2021;Mugnai et al 2021) due to the limitations of current astronomical observatories. Detailed characterization of individual, close-by transiting rocky planets may be the most direct path to investigate this question (Trifonov et al 2021), but population studies of atmospheric properties will be needed to address the statistical significance for planetary bulk compositions (Wang et al 2019;Helled et al 2021).…”

Section: Implications and Observabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Redox hysteresis of super-Earth exoplanets from magma ocean circulation

Lichtenberg

2021

Preprint

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Internal redox reactions may irreversibly alter the mantle composition and volatile inventory of terrestrial and super-Earth exoplanets and affect the prospects for atmospheric observations. The global efficacy of these mechanisms, however, hinges on the transfer of reduced iron from the molten silicate mantle to the metal core. Scaling analysis indicates that turbulent diffusion in the internal magma oceans of sub-Neptunes can kinetically entrain liquid iron droplets and quench core formation. This suggests that the chemical equilibration between core, mantle, and atmosphere may be energetically limited by convective overturn in the magma flow. Hence, molten super-Earths possibly retain a compositional memory of their accretion path. Redox control by magma ocean circulation is positively correlated with planetary heat flow, internal gravity, and planet size. The presence and speciation of remanent atmospheres, surface mineralogy, and core mass fraction of atmosphere-stripped exoplanets may thus constrain magma ocean dynamics.

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Ariel planetary interiors White Paper

Cited by 17 publications

References 172 publications

Towards a new era in giant exoplanet characterisation

Towards a new era in giant exoplanet characterisation

Composition of super-Earths, super-Mercuries, and their host stars

Redox hysteresis of super-Earth exoplanets from magma ocean circulation

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