Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). XIV. Finding Terrestrial Protoplanets In The Galactic Neighborhood
The increased brightness temperature of young rocky protoplanets during their magma ocean epoch makes them potentially amenable to atmospheric characterization to distances from the solar system far greater than thermally equilibrated terrestrial exoplanets, offering observational opportunities for unique insights into the origin of secondary atmospheres and the near surface conditions of prebiotic environments.
The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) mission will employ a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer to directly measure the thermal emission of terrestrial exoplanets. Here, we seek to assess the capabilities of various instrumental design choices of the LIFE mission concept for the detection of cooling protoplanets with transient high-temperature magma ocean atmospheres, in young stellar associations in particular.
Using the LIFE mission instrument simulator (LIFEsim) we assess how specific instrumental parameters and design choices, such as wavelength coverage, aperture diameter, and photon throughput, facilitate or disadvantage the detection of protoplanets. We focus on the observational sensitivities of distance to the observed planetary system, protoplanet brightness temperature using a blackbody assumption, and orbital distance of the potential protoplanets around both G- and M-dwarf stars.
Our simulations suggest that LIFE will be able to detect (S/N ≥ 7) hot protoplanets in young stellar associations up to distances of ≈100 pc from the solar system for reasonable integration times (up to ∼hours).
Detection of an Earth-sized protoplanet orbiting a solar-sized host star at 1 AU requires less than 30 minutes of integration time. M-dwarfs generally need shorter integration times. The contribution from wavelength regions <6 μm is important for decreasing the detection threshold and discriminating emission temperatures.
Lorenzo Cesario, Tim Lichtenberg, Eleonora Alei, Óscar Carrión-González, Felix A. Dannert, Denis Defrère, Steve Ertel, Andrea Fortier, A. García Muñoz, Adrian M. Glauser, Jonah T. Hansen, Ravit Helled, Philipp A. Huber, Michael J. Ireland, Jens Kammerer, Romain Laugier, Jorge Lillo-Box, Franziska Menti, Michael R. Meyer, Lena Noack, Sascha P. Quanz, Andreas Quirrenbach, Sarah Rugheimer, Floris van der Tak, Haiyang S. Wang, Marius Anger, Olga Balsalobre-Ruza, Surendra Bhattarai, Marrick Braam, Amadeo Castro-González, Charles S. Cockell, Tereza Constantinou, Gabriele Cugno, Jeanne Davoult, Manuel Güdel, Nina Hernitschek, Sasha Hinkley, Satoshi Itoh, Markus Janson, Anders Johansen, Hugh R. A. Jones, Stephen R. Kane, Tim A. van Kempen, Kristina G. Kislyakova, Judith Korth, Andjelka B. Kovacevic, Stefan Kraus, Rolf Kuiper, Joice Mathew, Taro Matsuo, Yamila Miguel, Michiel Min, Ramon Navarro, Ramses M. Ramirez, Heike Rauer, Berke Vow Ricketti, Amedeo Romagnolo, Martin Schlecker, Evan L. Sneed, Vito Squicciarini, Keivan G. Stassun, Motohide Tamura, Daniel Viudez-Moreiras, Robin D. Wordsworth, the LIFE Collaboration
Comments: 18 pages, 19 figures; accepted for publication in A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2410.13457 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2410.13457v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.13457
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From: Lorenzo Cesario Mr.
[v1] Thu, 17 Oct 2024 11:38:21 UTC (4,744 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13457
Astrobiology,
