petitRADTRANS: a Python radiative transfer package for exoplanet characterization and retrieval

We present the easy-to-use, publicly available, Python package petitRADTRANS, built for the spectral characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. The code is fast, accurate, and versatile; it can calculate both transmission and emission spectra within a few seconds at low resolution ($\lambda/\Delta\lambda$ = 1000; correlated-k method) and high resolution ($\lambda/\Delta\lambda = 10^6$; line-by-line method), using only a few lines of input instruction. The somewhat slower correlated-k method is used at low resolution because it is more accurate than methods such as opacity sampling. Clouds can be included and treated using wavelength-dependent power law opacities, or by using optical constants of real condensates, specifying either the cloud particle size, or the atmospheric mixing and particle settling strength. Opacities of amorphous or crystalline, spherical or irregularly-shaped cloud particles are available. The line opacity database spans temperatures between 80 and 3000 K, allowing to model fluxes of objects such as terrestrial planets, super-Earths, Neptunes, or hot Jupiters, if their atmospheres are hydrogen-dominated. Higher temperature points and species will be added in the future, allowing to also model the class of ultra hot-Jupiters, with equilibrium temperatures $T_{\rm eq} \gtrsim 2000$ K. Radiative transfer results were tested by cross-verifying the low- and high-resolution implementation of petitRADTRANS, and benchmarked with the petitCODE, which itself is also benchmarked to the ATMO and Exo-REM codes. We successfully carried out test retrievals of synthetic JWST emission and transmission spectra (for the hot Jupiter TrES-4b, which has a $T_{\rm eq}$ of $\sim$ 1800 K). The code is publicly available at http://gitlab.com/mauricemolli/petitRADTRANS, and its documentation can be found at https://petitradtrans.readthedocs.io.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, published in A&

HCN production in Titan's atmosphere: Coupling quantum chemistry and disequilibrium atmospheric modeling

This is the author accepted manuscript. the final version is available from IOP Publishing via the DOI in this recordHydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a critical reactive source of nitrogen for building key biomolecules relevant for the origin of life. Still, many HCN reactions remain uncharacterized by experiments and theory, and the complete picture of HCN production in planetary atmospheres is not fully understood. To improve this situation, we develop a novel technique making use of computational quantum chemistry, experimental data, and atmospheric numerical simulations. First, we use quantum chemistry simulations to explore the entire field of possible reactions for a list of primary species in N2-, CH4-, and H2-dominated atmospheres. In this process, we discover 33 new reactions with no previously known rate coefficients. From here, we develop a consistent reduced atmospheric hybrid chemical network (CRAHCN) containing experimental values when available and our calculated rate coefficients otherwise. Next, we couple CRAHCN to a 1D chemical kinetic model (ChemKM) to compute the HCN abundance as a function of atmospheric depth on Titan. Our simulated atmospheric HCN profile agrees very well with the Cassini observations. CRAHCN contains 104 reactions; however, nearly all of the simulated atmospheric HCN profile can be obtained using a scaled-down network of only 19 dominant reactions. From here, we form a complete picture of HCN chemistry in Titan's atmosphere, from the dissociation of the main atmospheric species, down to the direct production of HCN along four major channels. One of these channels was first discovered and characterized in Pearce et al. and this work.NSERCEuropean Union Horizon 202

Understanding the atmospheric properties and chemical composition of the ultra-hot Jupiter HAT-P-7b II. Mapping the effects of gas kinetics

Funding: Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG project number Ts 17/2–1.Aims. The atmospheres of ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs) are commonly considered to be at thermochemical equilibrium. We aim to provide disequilibrium chemistry maps for a global understanding of the chemistry in the atmosphere of HAT-P-7b and assess the importance of disequilibrium chemistry on UHJs. Methods. We applied a hierarchical modeling approach using 97 1D atmospheric profiles from a 3D general circulation model of HAT-P-7b. For each atmospheric 1D profile, we evaluated our kinetic cloud formation model consistently with the local gas-phase composition in chemical equilibrium. This served as input to study the quenching of dominating CHNO-binding molecules. We evaluated quenching results from a zeroth-order approximation in comparison to a kinetic gas-phase approach. Results. We find that the zeroth-order approach of estimating quenching points agrees well with the full gas-kinetic modeling results. However, it underestimates the quenching levels by about one order of magnitude at high temperatures. Chemical disequilibrium has the greatest effect on the nightside and morning abundance of species such as H, H2O, CH4, CO2, HCN, and all CnHm molecules; heavier CnHm molecules are more affected by disequilibrium processes. The CO abundance, however, is affected only marginally. While dayside abundances also notably change, those around the evening terminator of HAT-P-7b are the least affected by disequilibrium processes. The latter finding may partially explain the consistency of observed transmission spectra of UHJs with atmospheres in thermochemical equilibrium. Photochemistry only negligibly affects molecular abundances and quenching levels. Conclusions. In general, the quenching points of the atmosphere of HAT-P-7b are at much lower pressures than in the cooler hot-jupiters. We propose several avenues to determining the effect of disequilibrium processes on UHJs that are in general based on abundance and opacity measurements at different local times. It remains a challenge to completely disentangle this from the chemical effects of clouds and that of a primordial nonsolar abundance.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Lower-than-expected flare temperatures for TRAPPIST-1

Aims. Stellar flares emit thermal and nonthermal radiation in the X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) regime. Although high energetic radiation from flares is a potential threat to exoplanet atmospheres and may lead to surface sterilization, it might also provide the extra energy for low-mass stars needed to trigger and sustain prebiotic chemistry. Despite the UV continuum emission being constrained partly by the flare temperature, few efforts have been made to determine the flare temperature for ultra-cool M-dwarfs. We investigate two flares on TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf star that hosts seven exoplanets of which three lie within its habitable zone. The flares are detected in all four passbands of the MuSCAT2 instrument allowing a determination of their temperatures and bolometric energies. Methods. We analyzed the light curves of the MuSCATl (multicolor simultaneous camera for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets) and MuSCAT2 instruments obtained between 2016 and 2021 in g, r, i, zs-filters. We conducted an automated flare search and visually confirmed possible flare events. The black body temperatures were inferred directly from the spectral energy distribution (SED) by extrapolating the filter-specific flux. We studied the temperature evolution, the global temperature, and the peak temperature of both flares. Results. White-light M-dwarf flares are frequently described in the literature by a black body with a temperature of 9000–10 000 K. For the first time we infer effective black body temperatures of flares that occurred on TRAPPIST-1. The black body temperatures for the two TRAPPIST-1 flares derived from the SED are consistent with TSED = 7940−390+430 K and TSED = 6030−270+300 K. The flare black body temperatures at the peak are also calculated from the peak SED yielding TSEDp = 13 620−1220+1520 K and TSEDp = 8290−550+660 K. We update the flare frequency distribution of TRAPPIST-1 and discuss the impacts of lower black body temperatures on exoplanet habitability. Conclusions. We show that for the ultra-cool M-dwarf TRAPPIST-1 the flare black body temperatures associated with the total continuum emission are lower and not consistent with the usually adopted assumption of 9000–10 000 K in the context of exoplanet research. For the peak emission, both flares seem to be consistent with the typical range from 9000 to 14 000 K, respectively. This could imply different and faster cooling mechanisms. Further multi-color observations are needed to investigate whether or not our observations are a general characteristic of ultra-cool M-dwarfs. This would have significant implications for the habitability of exoplanets around these stars because the UV surface flux is likely to be overestimated by the models with higher flare temperatures

LBT transmission spectroscopy of HAT-P-12b: confirmation of a cloudy atmosphere with no significant alkali features

The hot sub-Saturn-mass exoplanet HAT-P-12b is an ideal target for transmission spectroscopy because of its inflated radius. We observed one transit of the planet with the multi-object double spectrograph (MODS) on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) with the binocular mode and obtained an atmosphere transmission spectrum with a wavelength coverage of $\sim$ 0.4 -- 0.9 $\mathrm{\mu}$m. The spectrum is relatively flat and does not show any significant sodium or potassium absorption features. Our result is consistent with the revised Hubble Space Telescope (HST) transmission spectrum of a previous work, except that the HST result indicates a tentative detection of potassium. The potassium discrepancy could be the result of statistical fluctuation of the HST dataset. We fit the planetary transmission spectrum with an extensive grid of cloudy models and confirm the presence of high-altitude clouds in the planetary atmosphere. The fit was performed on the combined LBT and HST spectrum, which has an overall wavelength range of 0.4 -- 1.6 $\mathrm{\mu}$m. The LBT/MODS spectrograph has unique advantages in transmission spectroscopy observations because it can cover a wide wavelength range with a single exposure and acquire two sets of independent spectra simultaneously.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

A planetary system with two transiting mini-Neptunes near the radius valley transition around the bright M dwarf TOI-776

We report the discovery and characterization of two transiting planets around the bright M1 V star LP 961-53 (TOI-776, J = 8.5 mag, M = 0.54 ± 0.03 M ⊙) detected during Sector 10 observations of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Combining the TESS photometry with HARPS radial velocities, as well as ground-based follow-up transit observations from the MEarth and LCOGT telescopes, for the inner planet, TOI-776 b, we measured a period of P b = 8.25 d, a radius of R b = 1.85 ± 0.13 R ⊕, and a mass of M b = 4.0 ± 0.9 M ⊕; and for the outer planet, TOI-776 c, a period of P c = 15.66 d, a radius of R c = 2.02 ± 0.14 R ⊕, and a mass of M c = 5.3 ± 1.8 M ⊕. The Doppler data shows one additional signal, with a period of ~34 d, associated with the rotational period of the star. The analysis of fifteen years of ground-based photometric monitoring data and the inspection of different spectral line indicators confirm this assumption. The bulk densities of TOI-776 b and c allow for a wide range of possible interior and atmospheric compositions. However, both planets have retained a significant atmosphere, with slightly different envelope mass fractions. Thanks to their location near the radius gap for M dwarfs, we can start to explore the mechanism(s) responsible for the radius valley emergence around low-mass stars as compared to solar-like stars. While a larger sample of well-characterized planets in this parameter space is still needed to draw firm conclusions, we tentatively estimate that the stellar mass below which thermally-driven mass loss is no longer the main formation pathway for sculpting the radius valley is between 0.63 and 0.54 M ⊙. Due to the brightness of the star, the TOI-776 system is also an excellent target for the James Webb Space Telescope, providing a remarkable laboratory in which to break the degeneracy in planetary interior models and to test formation and evolution theories of small planets around low-mass stars. Based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Observatory under programs ID 1102.C-0923 and 60.A-9709

Lower-than-expected flare temperatures for TRAPPIST-1

Aims. Stellar flares emit thermal and nonthermal radiation in the X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) regime. Although high energetic radiation from flares is a potential threat to exoplanet atmospheres and may lead to surface sterilization, it might also provide the extra energy for low-mass stars needed to trigger and sustain prebiotic chemistry. Despite the UV continuum emission being constrained partly by the flare temperature, few efforts have been made to determine the flare temperature for ultra-cool M-dwarfs. We investigate two flares on TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf star that hosts seven exoplanets of which three lie within its habitable zone. The flares are detected in all four passbands of the MuSCAT2 instrument allowing a determination of their temperatures and bolometric energies. Methods. We analyzed the light curves of the MuSCATl (multicolor simultaneous camera for studying atmospheres of transiting exoplanets) and MuSCAT2 instruments obtained between 2016 and 2021 in g, r, i, zs-filters. We conducted an automated flare search and visually confirmed possible flare events. The black body temperatures were inferred directly from the spectral energy distribution (SED) by extrapolating the filter-specific flux. We studied the temperature evolution, the global temperature, and the peak temperature of both flares. Results. White-light M-dwarf flares are frequently described in the literature by a black body with a temperature of 9000- 10 000 K. For the first time we infer effective black body temperatures of flares that occurred on TRAPPIST-1. The black body temperatures for the two TRAPPIST-1 flares derived from the SED are consistent with TSED = 7940- 390+430 K and TSED = 6030- 270+300 K. The flare black body temperatures at the peak are also calculated from the peak SED yielding TSEDp = 13 620- 1220+1520 K and TSEDp = 8290- 550+660 K. We update the flare frequency distribution of TRAPPIST-1 and discuss the impacts of lower black body temperatures on exoplanet habitability. Conclusions. We show that for the ultra-cool M-dwarf TRAPPIST-1 the flare black body temperatures associated with the total continuum emission are lower and not consistent with the usually adopted assumption of 9000- 10 000 K in the context of exoplanet research. For the peak emission, both flares seem to be consistent with the typical range from 9000 to 14 000 K, respectively. This could imply different and faster cooling mechanisms. Further multi-color observations are needed to investigate whether or not our observations are a general characteristic of ultra-cool M-dwarfs. This would have significant implications for the habitability of exoplanets around these stars because the UV surface flux is likely to be overestimated by the models with higher flare temperatures