Issue |
A&A
Volume 675, July 2023
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A193 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202346583 | |
Published online | 20 July 2023 |
Expanding the inventory of spectral lines used to trace atmospheric escape in exoplanets
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam,
Science Park 904,
1098 XH
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: d.c.linssen@uva.nl
Received:
3
April
2023
Accepted:
12
June
2023
Escaping exoplanet atmospheres have been observed as deep transit signatures in a few specific spectral lines. Detections have been made in the hydrogen Ly-α line, the metastable helium line at 10 830 Å, and some UV lines of metallic species. Observational challenges, unexpected nondetections, and model degeneracies have generally made it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the escape process for individual planets. Expanding on the suite of spectral tracers used may help to mitigate these challenges. We present a new framework for modeling the transmission spectrum of hydrodynamically escaping atmospheres. We predict far UV to near infrared spectra for systems with different planet and stellar types and identify new lines that can potentially be used to study their upper atmospheres. Measuring the radius in the atmosphere at which the strongest lines form puts them into context within the upper atmospheric structure. Targeting a set of complementary spectral lines for the same planet will help us to better constrain the outflow properties.
Key words: planets and satellites: atmospheres / planets and satellites: gaseous planets / methods: numerical
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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