Heating efficiency in hydrogen-dominated upper atmospheres

Context. The heating efficiency is defined as the ratio of the net local gas-heating rate to the rate of stellar radiative energy absorption. It plays an important role in thermal-escape processes from the upper atmospheres of planets that are exposed to stellar soft X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation (XUV). Aims. We model the thermal-escape-related heating efficiency of the stellar XUV radiation in the hydrogen-dominated upper atmosphere of the extrasolar gas giant HD 209458b. The model result is then compared with previous thermal-hydrogen-escape studies which assumed heating efficiency values between 10-100%. Methods. The photolytic and electron impact processes in the thermosphere were studied by solving the kinetic Boltzmann equation and applying a Direct Simulation Monte Carlo model. We calculated the energy deposition rates of the stellar XUV flux and that of the accompanying primary photoelectrons that are caused by electron impact processes in the H2 to H transition region in the upper atmosphere. Results. The heating by XUV radiation of hydrogen-dominated upper atmospheres does not reach higher than 20% above the main thermosphere altitude, if the participation of photoelectron impact processes is included. Conclusions. Hydrogen-escape studies from exoplanets that assume heating efficiency values that are >= 20 % probably overestimate the thermal escape or mass-loss rates, while those who assumed values that are < 20% probably produce more realistic atmospheric-escape rates.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted to A&

Types of Gaseous Envelopes of "Hot Jupiter" Exoplanets

As a rule, the orbital velocities of "hot Jupiters," i.e., exoplanets with masses comparable to the mass of Jupiter and orbital semi-major axes less than 0.1 AU, are supersonic relative to the stellar wind, resulting in the formation of a bow shock. Gas-dynamical modeling shows that the gaseous envelopes around "hot Jupiters" can belong to two classes, depending on the position of the collision point. if the collision point is inside the Roche lobe of the planet, the envelopes have the almost spherical shapes of classical atmospheres, slightly distorted by the influence of the star and interactions with the stellar-wind gas; if the collision point is located outside the Roche lobe, outflows from the vicinity of the Lagrangian points $\mathrm L_1$ and $\mathrm L_2$ arise, and the envelope becomes substantially asymmetrical. The latter class of objects can also be divided into two types. If the dynamical pressure of the stellar-wind gas is high enough to stop the most powerful outflow from the vicinity of the inner Lagrangian point $\mathrm L_1$, a closed quasi-spherical envelope with a complex shape forms in the system. If the wind is unable to stop the outflow from $\mathrm L_1$, an open aspherical envelope forms. The possible existence of atmospheres of these three types is confirmed by 3D numerical modeling. Using the typical "hot Jupiter" HD 209458b as an example, it is shown that all three types of atmospheres could exist within the range of estimated parameters of this planet. Since different types of envelopes have different observational manifestations, determining the type of envelope in HD 209458b could apply additional constrains on the parameters of this exoplanet

Ligt: An LLOD-Native Vocabulary for Representing Interlinear Glossed Text as RDF

The paper introduces Ligt, a native RDF vocabulary for representing linguistic examples as text with interlinear glosses (IGT) in a linked data formalism. Interlinear glossing is a notation used in various fields of linguistics to provide readers with a way to understand linguistic phenomena and to provide corpus data when documenting endangered languages. This data is usually provided with morpheme-by-morpheme correspondence which is not supported by any established vocabularies for representing linguistic corpora or automated annotations. Interlinear Glossed Text can be stored and exchanged in several formats specifically designed for the purpose, but these differ in their designs and concepts, and they are tied to particular tools, so the reusability of the annotated data is limited. To improve interoperability and reusability, we propose to convert such glosses to a tool-independent representation well-suited for the Web of Data, i.e., a representation in RDF. Beyond establishing structural (format) interoperability by means of a common data representation, our approach also allows using shared vocabularies and terminology repositories available from the (Linguistic) Linked Open Data cloud. We describe the core vocabulary and the converters that use this vocabulary to convert IGT in a format of various widely-used tools into RDF. Ultimately, a Linked Data representation will facilitate the accessibility of language data from less-resourced language varieties within the (Linguistic) Linked Open Data cloud, as well as enable novel ways to access and integrate this information with (L)LOD dictionary data and other types of lexical-semantic resources. In a longer perspective, data currently only available through these formats will become more visible and reusable and contribute to the development of a truly multilingual (semantic) web

Electronic correlation effects and the Coulomb gap at finite temperature

We have investigated the effect of the long-range Coulomb interaction on the one-particle excitation spectrum of n-type Germanium, using tunneling spectroscopy on mechanically controllable break junctions. The tunnel conductance was measured as a function of energy and temperature. At low temperatures, the spectra reveal a minimum at zero bias voltage due to the Coulomb gap. In the temperature range above 1 K the Coulomb gap is filled by thermal excitations. This behavior is reflected in the temperature dependence of the variable-range hopping resitivity measured on the same samples: Up to a few degrees Kelvin the Efros-Shkovskii ln$R \propto T^{-1/2}$ law is obeyed, whereas at higher temperatures deviations from this law are observed, indicating a cross-over to Mott's ln$R \propto T^{-1/4}$ law. The mechanism of this cross-over is different from that considered previously in the literature.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure