The Puzzling Chemical Composition of GJ 436b's Atmosphere
The dissipation of the tidal energy deposited on eccentric planets may induce a heating of the planet that affects its atmospheric thermal structure.
Here we study the influence of tidal heating on the atmospheric composition of the eccentric (e = 0.16) “hot Neptune” GJ 436b, for which inconclusive chemical abundances are retrieved from multiwavelength photometric observations carried out during primary transit and secondary eclipse.
We build up a one-dimensional model of GJ 436b’s atmosphere in the vertical direction and compute the pressure-temperature and molecular abundances profiles for various plausible internal temperatures of the planet (up to 560 K) and metallicities (from solar to 100 times solar), using a radiative-convective model and a chemical model which includes thermochemical kinetics, vertical mixing, and photochemistry.
We find that the CO/CH4 abundance ratio increases with metallicity and tidal heating, and ranges from 1/20 to 1000 within the ranges of metallicity and internal temperature explored. Water vapour locks most of the oxygen and reaches a very high abundance, whatever the metallicity and internal temperature of the planet. The CO2/H2O abundance ratio increases dramatically with metallicity, and takes values between 1e-5-1e-4 with solar elemental abundances and 0.1 for a metallicity 100 times solar.
None of the atmospheric models based on solid physical and chemical grounds provide a fully satisfactory agreement with available observational data, although the comparison of calculated spectra and observations seem to point to models with a high metallicity and efficient tidal heating, in which high CO/CH4 abundance ratios and warm temperatures in the dayside atmosphere are favoured.
M. Agundez, O. Venot, F. Selsis, N. Iro (Submitted on 11 Dec 2013)
Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJ
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1312.3007 [astro-ph.EP]
(or arXiv:1312.3007v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history From: Marcelino Agundez [v1] Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:33:03 GMT (574kb)
