CHEMICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE C/O RATIO ON HOT JUPITERS: EXAMPLES FROM WASP-12b, COROT-2b, XO-1b, AND HD 189733b

A warm Neptune's methane reveals core mass and vigorous atmospheric mixing

Observations of transiting gas giant exoplanets have revealed a pervasive depletion of methane1-4, which has only recently been identified atmospherically5,6. The depletion is thought to be maintained by disequilibrium processes such as photochemistry or mixing from a hotter interior7-9. However, the interiors are largely unconstrained along with the vertical mixing strength and only upper limits on the CH4 depletion have been available. The warm Neptune WASP-107b stands out among exoplanets with an unusually low density, reported low core mass10, and temperatures amenable to CH4, though previous observations have yet to find the molecule2,4. Here we present a JWST-NIRSpec transmission spectrum of WASP-107b that shows features from both SO2 and CH4 along with H2O, CO2, and CO. We detect methane with 4.2σ significance at an abundance of 1.0 ± 0.5 ppm, which is depleted by 3 orders of magnitude relative to equilibrium expectations. Our results are highly constraining for the atmosphere and interior, which indicate the envelope has a super-solar metallicity of 43 ± 8 × solar, a hot interior with an intrinsic temperature of Tint = 460 ± 40 K, and vigorous vertical mixing which depletes CH4 with a diffusion coefficient of Kzz = 1011.6±0.1 cm2 s-1. Photochemistry has a negligible effect on the CH4 abundance but is needed to account for the SO2. We infer a core mass of11.5 - 3.6 + 3.0 M ⊕ , which is much higher than previous upper limits10, releasing a tension with core-accretion models11.

Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec G395H

Measuring the abundances of carbon and oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres is considered a crucial avenue for unlocking the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems1,2. Access to the chemical inventory of an exoplanet requires high-precision observations, often inferred from individual molecular detections with low-resolution space-based3-5 and high-resolution ground-based6-8 facilities. Here we report the medium-resolution (R ≈ 600) transmission spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere between 3 and 5 μm covering several absorption features for the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b (ref. 9), obtained with the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) G395H grating of JWST. Our observations achieve 1.46 times photon precision, providing an average transit depth uncertainty of 221 ppm per spectroscopic bin, and present minimal impacts from systematic effects. We detect significant absorption from CO2 (28.5σ) and H2O (21.5σ), and identify SO2 as the source of absorption at 4.1 μm (4.8σ). Best-fit atmospheric models range between 3 and 10 times solar metallicity, with sub-solar to solar C/O ratios. These results, including the detection of SO2, underscore the importance of characterizing the chemistry in exoplanet atmospheres and showcase NIRSpec G395H as an excellent mode for time-series observations over this critical wavelength range10.

The exoplanet perspective on future ice giant exploration

Exoplanets number in their thousands, and the number is ever increasing with the advent of new surveys and improved instrumentation. One of the most surprising things we have learnt from these discoveries is not that small-rocky planets in their stars habitable zones are likely to be common, but that the most typical size of exoplanets is that not seen in our solar system-radii between that of Neptune and the Earth dubbed mini-Neptunes and super-Earths. In fact, a transiting exoplanet is four times as likely to be in this size regime than that of any giant planet in our solar system. Investigations into the atmospheres of giant hydrogen/helium dominated exoplanets has pushed down to Neptune and mini-Neptune-sized worlds revealing molecular absorption from water, scattering and opacity from clouds, and measurements of atmospheric abundances. However, unlike measurements of Jupiter, or even Saturn sized worlds, the smaller giants lack a ground truth on what to expect or interpret from their measurements. How did these sized worlds form and evolve and was it different from their larger counterparts? What is their internal composition and how does that impact their atmosphere? What informs the energy budget of these distant worlds? In this we discuss what characteristics we can measure for exoplanets, and why a mission to the ice giants in our solar system is the logical next step for understanding exoplanets. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Future exploration of ice giant systems'.

Exoplanetary Atmospheres-Chemistry, Formation Conditions, and Habitability

Characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is the new frontier in exoplanetary science. The last two decades of exoplanet discoveries have revealed that exoplanets are very common and extremely diverse in their orbital and bulk properties. We now enter a new era as we begin to investigate the chemical diversity of exoplanets, their atmospheric and interior processes, and their formation conditions. Recent developments in the field have led to unprecedented advancements in our understanding of atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets and the implications for their formation conditions. We review these developments in the present work. We review in detail the theory of atmospheric chemistry in all classes of exoplanets discovered to date, from highly irradiated gas giants, ice giants, and super-Earths, to directly imaged giant planets at large orbital separations. We then review the observational detections of chemical species in exoplanetary atmospheres of these various types using different methods, including transit spectroscopy, Doppler spectroscopy, and direct imaging. In addition to chemical detections, we discuss the advances in determining chemical abundances in these atmospheres and how such abundances are being used to constrain exoplanetary formation conditions and migration mechanisms. Finally, we review recent theoretical work on the atmospheres of habitable exoplanets, followed by a discussion of future outlook of the field.

ON THE COMPOSITION OF YOUNG, DIRECTLY IMAGED GIANT PLANETS

The past decade has seen significant progress on the direct detection and characterization of young, self-luminous giant planets at wide orbital separations from their host stars. Some of these planets show evidence for disequilibrium processes like transport-induced quenching in their atmospheres; photochemistry may also be important, despite the large orbital distances. These disequilibrium chemical processes can alter the expected composition, spectral behavior, thermal structure, and cooling history of the planets, and can potentially confuse determinations of bulk elemental ratios, which provide important insights into planet-formation mechanisms. Using a thermo/photochemical kinetics and transport model, we investigate the extent to which disequilibrium chemistry affects the composition and spectra of directly imaged giant exoplanets. Results for specific "young Jupiters" such as HR 8799 b and 51 Eri b are presented, as are general trends as a function of planetary effective temperature, surface gravity, incident ultraviolet flux, and strength of deep atmospheric convection. We find that quenching is very important on young Jupiters, leading to CO/CH4 and N2/NH3 ratios much greater than, and H2O mixing ratios a factor of a few less than, chemical-equilibrium predictions. Photochemistry can also be important on such planets, with CO2 and HCN being key photochemical products. Carbon dioxide becomes a major constituent when stratospheric temperatures are low and recycling of water via the H2 + OH reaction becomes kinetically stifled. Young Jupiters with effective temperatures ≲700 K are in a particularly interesting photochemical regime that differs from both transiting hot Jupiters and our own solar-system giant planets.

Chemical kinetics on extrasolar planets

Chemical kinetics plays an important role in controlling the atmospheric composition of all planetary atmospheres, including those of extrasolar planets. For the hottest exoplanets, the composition can closely follow thermochemical-equilibrium predictions, at least in the visible and infrared photosphere at dayside (eclipse) conditions. However, for atmospheric temperatures approximately <2000K, and in the uppermost atmosphere at any temperature, chemical kinetics matters. The two key mechanisms by which kinetic processes drive an exoplanet atmosphere out of equilibrium are photochemistry and transport-induced quenching. I review these disequilibrium processes in detail, discuss observational consequences and examine some of the current evidence for kinetic processes on extrasolar planets.

Exploring the diversity of Jupiter-class planets

Of the 900+ confirmed exoplanets discovered since 1995 for which we have constraints on their mass (i.e. not including Kepler candidates), 75% have masses larger than Saturn (0.3 MJ), 53% are more massive than Jupiter and 67% are within 1 AU of their host stars. When Kepler candidates are included, Neptune-sized giant planets could form the majority of the planetary population. And yet the term 'hot Jupiter' fails to account for the incredible diversity of this class of astrophysical object, which exists on a continuum of giant planets from the cool jovians of our own Solar System to the highly irradiated, tidally locked hot roasters. We review theoretical expectations for the temperatures, molecular composition and cloud properties of hydrogen-dominated Jupiter-class objects under a variety of different conditions. We discuss the classification schemes for these Jupiter-class planets proposed to date, including the implications for our own Solar System giant planets and the pitfalls associated with compositional classification at this early stage of exoplanetary spectroscopy. We discuss the range of planetary types described by previous authors, accounting for (i) thermochemical equilibrium expectations for cloud condensation and favoured chemical stability fields; (ii) the metallicity and formation mechanism for these giant planets; (iii) the importance of optical absorbers for energy partitioning and the generation of a temperature inversion; (iv) the favoured photochemical pathways and expectations for minor species (e.g. saturated hydrocarbons and nitriles); (v) the unexpected presence of molecules owing to vertical mixing of species above their quench levels; and (vi) methods for energy and material redistribution throughout the atmosphere (e.g. away from the highly irradiated daysides of close-in giants). Finally, we discuss the benefits and potential flaws of retrieval techniques for establishing a family of atmospheric solutions that reproduce the available data, and the requirements for future spectroscopic characterization of a set of Jupiter-class objects to test our physical and chemical understanding of these planets.

Disk evolution, element abundances and cloud properties of young gas giant planets

We discuss the chemical pre-conditions for planet formation, in terms of gas and ice abundances in a protoplanetary disk, as function of time and position, and the resulting chemical composition and cloud properties in the atmosphere when young gas giant planets form, in particular discussing the effects of unusual, non-solar carbon and oxygen abundances. Large deviations between the abundances of the host star and its gas giants seem likely to occur if the planet formation follows the core-accretion scenario. These deviations stem from the separate evolution of gas and dust in the disk, where the dust forms the planet cores, followed by the final run-away accretion of the left-over gas. This gas will contain only traces of elements like C, N and O, because those elements have frozen out as ices. PRODIMO protoplanetary disk models are used to predict the chemical evolution of gas and ice in the midplane. We find that cosmic rays play a crucial role in slowly un-blocking the CO, where the liberated oxygen forms water, which then freezes out quickly. Therefore, the C/O ratio in the gas phase is found to gradually increase with time, in a region bracketed by the water and CO ice-lines. In this regions, C/O is found to approach unity after about 5 Myrs, scaling with the cosmic ray ionization rate assumed. We then explore how the atmospheric chemistry and cloud properties in young gas giants are affected when the non-solar C/O ratios predicted by the disk models are assumed. The DRIFT cloud formation model is applied to study the formation of atmospheric clouds under the influence of varying premordial element abundances and its feedback onto the local gas. We demonstrate that element depletion by cloud formation plays a crucial role in converting an oxygen-rich atmosphere gas into carbon-rich gas when non-solar, premordial element abundances are considered as suggested by disk models.

COMPOSITIONAL DIVERSITY IN THE ATMOSPHERES OF HOT NEPTUNES, WITH APPLICATION TO GJ 436b

Neptune-sized extrasolar planets that orbit relatively close to their host stars - often called "hot Neptunes" - are common within the known population of exoplanets and planetary candidates. Similar to our own Uranus and Neptune, inefficient accretion of nebular gas is expected produce hot Neptunes whose masses are dominated by elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. At high atmospheric metallicities of 10-10,000× solar, hot Neptunes will exhibit an interesting continuum of atmospheric compositions, ranging from more Neptune-like, H2-dominated atmospheres to more Venus-like, CO2-dominated atmospheres. We explore the predicted equilibrium and disequilibrium chemistry of generic hot Neptunes and find that the atmospheric composition varies strongly as a function of temperature and bulk atmospheric properties such as metallicity and the C/O ratio. Relatively exotic H2O, CO, CO2, and even O2-dominated atmospheres are possible for hot Neptunes. We apply our models to the case of GJ 436b, where we find that a CO-rich, CH4-poor atmosphere can be a natural consequence of a very high atmospheric metallicity. From comparisons of our results with Spitzer eclipse data for GJ 436b, we conclude that although the spectral fit from the high-metallicity forward models is not quite as good as the best fit obtained from pure retrieval methods, the atmospheric composition predicted by these forward models is more physically and chemically plausible in terms of the relative abundance of major constituents. High-metallicity atmospheres (orders of magnitude in excess of solar) should therefore be considered as a possibility for GJ 436b and other hot Neptunes.