Atmospheres & Climate

Three Young Planets Around The K-dwarf K2-198: High-energy Environment, Evaporation History And Expected Future

By Keith Cowing
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astro-ph.EP
November 15, 2023
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Three Young Planets Around The K-dwarf K2-198: High-energy Environment, Evaporation History And Expected Future
Future radii of planets b, c, d at an age of 5 Gyr. The current radii of planets c, d and b are shown as dashed lines, together with the current and final radii for a range of planetary masses for the outer two planets d and b; the core is represented by a black circle, while the envelope is shown as a colored circle around the core. The core size increases with increasing mass. Note that the size scaling of the envelope compared to the core is arbitrary. It is chosen such that one can easily compare present and final planetary radii and immediately see, which configuration can hold on to some fraction of the envelope and remain above the gap. While the outermost planet b will retain enough envelope to remain well above the radius gap around 1.8 R⊕ for all masses considered, we find that for planet d there is an intermediate mass range between ∼7 to 18 M⊕, for which planets can retain an envelope and survive above the gap. Lower mass planets will experience enough mass loss to completely lose their envelope, while higher mass planets only have very thin envelopes at present age to match the observed radius due to their larger core size, that their thin envelope is easily lost, in spite of their large mass. Planet c is assumed to be rocky at present and will not change its size significantly. The current radius of planet c matches well with the radii predicted for Earth-like rocky cores in the mass regime of 3-5 M⊕. — astro-ph.HE

Planets orbiting young stars are thought to experience atmospheric evaporation as a result of the host stars’ high magnetic activity. We study the evaporation history and expected future of the three known transiting exoplanets in the young multiplanet system K2-198.

Based on spectroscopic and photometric measurements, we estimate an age of the K-dwarf host star between 200 and 500 Myr, and calculate the high-energy environment of these planets using eROSITA X-ray measurements. We find that the innermost planet K2-198c has likely lost its primordial envelope within the first few tens of Myr regardless of the age at which the star drops out of the saturated X-ray regime.

For the two outer planets, a range of initial envelope mass fractions is possible, depending on the not-yet-measured planetary mass and the stars’ spin-down history. Regarding the future of the system, we find that the outermost planet K2-198b is stable against photoevaporation for a wide range of planetary masses, while the middle planet K2-198d is only able to retain an atmosphere for a mass range between ~7 and 18 Earth-masses. Lower-mass planets are too susceptible to mass loss, and a very thin present-day envelope for higher-mass planets is easily lost with the estimated mass-loss rates.

Our results support the idea that all three planets started out above the radius valley in the (sub-)Neptune regime and were then transformed into their current states by atmospheric evaporation, but also stress the importance of measuring planetary masses for (young) multiplanet systems before conducting more detailed photoevaporation simulations.

Laura Ketzer, Katja Poppenhaeger, Martina Baratella, Ekaterina Ilin

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2311.06897 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2311.06897v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Journal reference: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 527, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 374-385
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3197
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Submission history
From: Laura Ketzer [view email]
[v1] Sun, 12 Nov 2023 16:51:43 UTC (500 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06897
Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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