High stellar FUV/NUV ratio and oxygen contents in the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets

By F. Tian, K. France, J. Linsky, P. Mauas, M. Vieytes. 2013

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent observations of several planet-hosting M dwarfs show that most have FUV/NUV flux ratios 1000 times greater than that of the Sun. Here we show that the atmospheric oxygen contents (O2 and O3) of potentially habitable planets in this type of UV environment could be 2–3 orders of magnitude greater than those of their counterparts around Sun-like stars as a result of decreased photolysis of O3, H2O2, and HO2. Thus detectable levels of atmospheric oxygen, in combination with the existence of H2O and CO2, may not be the most promising biosignatures on planets around stars with high FUV/NUV ratios such as the observed M dwarfs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/da2fd85c3a2c09e8e3660ddf7046d82634c12415

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Citations in the corpus

ABIOTIC OXYGEN-DOMINATED ATMOSPHERES ON TERRESTRIAL HABITABLE ZONE PLANETS (2014, background): “Various authors have investigated the idea that abiotic oxygen production could lead to ‘false positives’ for life (Selsis et al. 2002; Segura et al. 2007; Léger et al. 2011; Hu et al. 2012; Tian et al. 2014).”
ABIOTIC O2 LEVELS ON PLANETS AROUND F, G, K, AND M STARS: POSSIBLE FALSE POSITIVES FOR LIFE? (2015, methodology): “More recently, Tian et al. (2014) have suggested that CO2-rich planets orbiting M stars may build up significant amounts of O2 because of the higher ratio of far ultraviolet to near ultraviolet (FUV/NUV) stellar radiation.”
HAZMAT. I. THE EVOLUTION OF FAR-UV AND NEAR-UV EMISSION FROM EARLY M STARS (2014, background): “These are providing valuable initial inputs to planetary photochemical models (Miguel & Kaltenegger 2014; Tian et al. 2014); however, the full history of a planet’s UV exposure is impossible to predict from a single observation.”
THE MUSCLES TREASURY SURVEY. I. MOTIVATION AND OVERVIEW (2016, background): “…atmospheric heating and chemistry on Earth-like planets, is critical to the defini- tion and interpretation of biosignature gases (e.g., Seager et al. 2013), and may even produce false-positives in our search for biologic activity (Hu et al. 2012; Tian et al. 2014; Domagal-Goldman et al. 2014).”
ABIOTIC OZONE AND OXYGEN IN ATMOSPHERES SIMILAR TO PREBIOTIC EARTH (2014, methodology): “…star σ Boötis (1×1021 molecules cm-2) than any of the other model planets, but orders of magnitude lower than the O2 column on pre-industrial Earth (5×1024 molecules cm-2), and lower than the largest values reported by Tian et al. (2014), who report column densities up to 1×1023 molecules cm-2.”
Exoplanet Biosignatures: A Review of Remotely Detectable Signs of Life (2017, background): “…from robust photolysis of CO2 or a history of extreme hydrogen escape and O2 buildup (e.g., DomagalGoldman and Meadows, 2010; Hu et al., 2012; DomagalGoldman et al., 2014; Tian et al., 2014; Wordsworth and Pierrehumbert, 2014; Gao et al., 2015; Harman et al., 2015; Luger and Barnes, 2015).”
How to Characterize Habitable Worlds and Signs of Life (2017, methodology): “How strong a planetary magnetic field needs to be to initially protect a planet’s atmosphere from early stellar winds is another interesting unknown (see, e.g., Grießmeier et al. 2009, Lammer et al. 2011, reviewed in Tian et al. 2014).”
The Habitability of Planets Orbiting M-dwarf Stars (2016, background): “…(France et al., 2013, 2016), CO2-rich M-dwarf planets may have a greater susceptibility to develop abiotic O2-rich atmospheres created by CO2 photolysis (followed by recombination of O atoms with other O atoms) (Tian et al., 2014; Harman et al., 2015), particularly if O2 surface sinks are small.”