A Possible Bifurcation in Atmospheres of Strongly Irradiated Stars and Planets

By I. Hubeny, Adam Burrows, D. Sudarsky. 2003

341 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We show that under certain circumstances the differences between the absorption mean and Planck mean opacities can lead to multiple solutions for an LTE atmospheric structure. Since the absorption and Planck mean opacities are not expected to differ significantly in the usual case of radiative equilibrium, nonirradiated atmospheres, the most interesting situations in which the effect may play a role are strongly irradiated stars and planets, and also possibly structures in which there is a significant deposition of mechanical energy, such as stellar chromospheres and accretion disks. We have presented an illustrative example of a strongly irradiated giant planet in which the bifurcation effect is predicted to occur for a certain range of distances from the star.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12f9523a6114c11b331afd52620bcea3a4321ca2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Jon Fortney
2. N. Madhusudhan
3. A. Showman
4. M. Marley
5. D. Sing
6. H. Knutson
7. D. Deming
8. V. Parmentier

In Atmospheric Science

1. M. Marley
2. Jon Fortney
3. A. Showman
4. R. Freedman
5. N. Madhusudhan
6. K. Lodders
7. V. Parmentier
8. Adam Burrows

Citations in the corpus

• From thermal dissociation to condensation in the atmospheres of ultra hot Jupiters: WASP-121b in context (2018, methodology): “…models used in the study of exoplanet atmospheres are legacy models from stellar and substellar studies, they almost always have these two effects already incorporated (Marley et al. 1996; Burrows et al. 1997; Barman et al. 2001; Hubeny et al. 2003; Fortney et al. 2008; Lothringer et al. 2018).”
• 3D mixing in hot Jupiters atmospheres. I. Application to the day/night cold trap in HD 209458b (2013, methodology): “Hubeny et al. (2003)and Fortney et al. (2008) showed that, because of their enormous opacities at visible wavelengths, the presence of gaseous titanium and vanadium oxides can lead to stratospheres analogous to those inferred on hot Jupiters.”
• ATMOSPHERIC SULFUR PHOTOCHEMISTRY ON HOT JUPITERS (2009, background): “Hubeny et al. (2003) pointed out that efficient absorption of visible light by gaseous TiO and VO would greatly heat the upper atmospheres of those planets already hot enough for these molecules to be present as vapor.”
• Transits and Occultations (2010, background): “itude) where the atmosphere does not radiate efficiently. The identity of this absorber in hot Jupiter atmospheres has been a topic of debate. Gaseous titanium oxide and vanadium oxide are candidates (Hubeny et al. 2003), as are photochemically-produced sulfur compounds (Zahnle et al. 2009). Meanwhil”
• A CORRELATION BETWEEN STELLAR ACTIVITY AND HOT JUPITER EMISSION SPECTRA (2010, background): “…know the nature of the absorber required to create these inversions; it was initially suggested that gas-phase TiO might provide the necessary opacity(Hubeny et al. 2003; Burrows et al. 2007, 2008; Fortney et al. 2006, 2008), but this theory cannot explain the full range of current observations.”
• TRANSITIONS IN THE CLOUD COMPOSITION OF HOT JUPITERS (2016, background): “…titanium and vanadium oxides should produce a strong thermal inversion by absorbing a significant amount of the stellar light in the upper atmosphere and by impeding the thermal cooling of the atmosphere (Hubeny et al. 2003; Fortney et al. 2008; Showman et al. 2009; Parmentier et al. 2015).”
• ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION OF HOT JUPITERS: COUPLED RADIATIVE-DYNAMICAL GENERAL CIRCULATION MODEL SIMULATIONS OF HD 189733b and HD 209458b (2008, positive): “Interestingly, both branches of the bifurcation discussed by Hubeny et al. (2003) for different planets occur here on a single planet’s dayside.”
• A SYSTEMATIC RETRIEVAL ANALYSIS OF SECONDARY ECLIPSE SPECTRA. II. A UNIFORM ANALYSIS OF NINE PLANETS AND THEIR C TO O RATIOS (2013, background): “It has been mrl@gps.caltech.edu 1 Correspondence to be directed to mrl@gps.caltech.edu suggested (Hubeny et al. 2003; Fortney et al. 2008) that gas-phase TiO and VO, which are effective absorbers at optical wavelengths, could lead to the formation of temperature inversions in these atmospheres.”
• HST hot-Jupiter transmission spectral survey: detection of potassium in WASP-31b along with a cloud deck and Rayleigh scattering (2014, background): “Finally, TiO was ruled out in the very hot planet WASP-12b and the atmosphere was found to be dominated by aerosols, with corundum a possible candidate that is particularly relevant given its high condensation temperature applicable to this very-hot Jupiter (Sing et al. 2013).”
• The 3.6-8.0 μm Broadband Emission Spectrum of HD 209458b: Evidence for an Atmospheric Temperature Inversion (2007, background): “The idea that the spectrum of a strongly irradiated extrasolar giant planet could mani- fest water emission features was presaged by Hubeny et al. (2003) and Burrows et al. (2006), who discussed a bifurcation in the atmosphere solution, but we still do not know the nature of the stratospheric…”
• The TRAPPIST survey of southern transiting planets. I. Thirty eclipses of the ultra-short period planet WASP-43 b (2012, background): “The red model features a dayside tem- perature inversion due to the strong optical opacity of TiO and VO gases (Hubeny et al. 2003, Fortney et al. 2006).”
• THE DEUTERIUM-BURNING MASS LIMIT FOR BROWN DWARFS AND GIANT PLANETS (2010, methodology): “Those in the latter sequence have a boundary condition calculated using COOLTLUSTLY (Hubeny 1988; Hubeny & Lanz 1995; Hubeny et al. 2003; Burrows et al. 2006; Sharp & Burrows 2007), with the same helium and initial deuterium fractions (Heng & Burrows 2010 in prep.).”
• On the radiative equilibrium of irradiated planetary atmospheres (2010, background): “Following Eddington, I writeµ∗ ≡ √ Kv/Jv. Note that this approach is valid in two extreme cases: for isotropic irradiation (e.g. Hubeny et al. 2003), for whichµ∗ = 1/ √ 3, or in the case of collimated visible irradiation (e.g. Meador & Weaver 1980), in which caseµ∗ = cosθ∗.”
• C/O RATIO AS A DIMENSION FOR CHARACTERIZING EXOPLANETARY ATMOSPHERES (2012, background): “Traditionally, TiO and VO have been proposed to cause thermal inversions in highly irradiated hot Jupiter atmospheres (Hubeny et al. 2003; Fortney et al. 2008, but cf Spiegel et al. 2009).”
• Possible Solutions to the Radius Anomalies of Transiting Giant Planets (2006, methodology): “…in x 3, for all our calculations, we employ the evolutionary, spectral, atmospheric, and opacity techniques described in Burrows et al. (2003) and Hubeny et al. (2003) and discussed in Burrows et al. (2001).9 We set the redistribution factor ( f ; Burrows et al. 2004) equal to 1 4 and,…”
• Compositional Imprints in Density–Distance–Time: A Rocky Composition for Close-in Low-mass Exoplanets from the Location of the Valley of Evaporation (2017, background): “…approximation, which assumes that there is an incoming stellar irradiation flux in the visible wavelength range and an absorbed and intrinsic thermal flux (Hubeny et al. 2003; Hansen 2008; Guillot 2010; Heng et al. 2012; Robinson & Catling 2012; Parmentier & Guillot 2014; Heng et al. 2014).”
• Global Climate and Atmospheric Composition of the Ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-103b from HST and Spitzer Phase Curve Observations (2018, background): “…planets were initially predicted to have inverted temperature pressure profiles due to strong optical absorption by TiO/VO in the upper atmospheres (Hubeny et al. 2003; Fortney et al. 2008); however, observations of their emission spectra have been inconclusive on their thermal structure and…”