The Structure of Exoplanets

Abstract

The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of planetary system formation and evolution, and conceivably not even terribly common outcomes (although this remains an open question). Here, we review the diverse range of interior structures that are known to, and speculated to, exist in exoplanetary systems -- from mostly degenerate objects that are more than 10 times as massive as Jupiter, to intermediate-mass Neptune-like objects with large cores and moderate hydrogen/helium envelopes, to rocky objects with roughly the mass of the Earth.

To be published in PNAS special issue on exoplanets. 6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (13)

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• On the Luminosity of Young Jupiters
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• The Mass of KOI-94d and a Relation for Planet Radius, Mass, and Incident Flux
• Inflating Hot Jupiters With Ohmic Dissipation
• Synthetic Spectra and Colors of Young Giant Planet Atmospheres: Effects of Initial Conditions and Atmospheric Metallicity
• The Atmospheric Signatures of Super-Earths: How to Distinguish Between Hydrogen-Rich and Hydrogen-Poor Atmospheres
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• Alignment of the stellar spin with the orbits of a three-planet system
• Accurate Spitzer infrared radius measurement for the hot Neptune GJ 436b
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• Constraining the Origins of Neptune's Carbon Monoxide Abundance with CARMA Millimeter-wave Observations

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Hydrodynamic Simulations of the Interaction between Giant Stars and Planets
• The mass-radius relation of exoplanets, revisited
• Superionic silica-water and silica-hydrogen compounds under high pressure
• ExoMDN: Rapid characterization of exoplanet interior structures with Mixture Density Networks
• Ozone chemistry on tidally locked M dwarf planets
• The contribution of the ARIEL space mission to the study of planetary formation
• The Fundamental Connections Between the Solar System and Exoplanetary Science
• The Exoplanet Perspective on Future Ice Giant Exploration
• In Search of Future Earths: Assessing the possibility of finding Earth analogues in the later stages of their habitable lifetimes
• From Density Response to Energy Functionals and Back: An ab initio perspective on Matter Under Extreme Conditions
• The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG VI: The Curious Case of TrES-4b
• Ariel Planetary Interiors White Paper
• A HARDCORE model for constraining an exoplanet's core size
• Hydrodynamic Simulations of Disrupted Planetary Accretion Discs Inside the Core of an AGB Star
• Exoplanet phase curves at large phase angles. Diagnostics for extended hazy atmospheres
• Atmospheric mass loss of extrasolar planets orbiting magnetically active host stars
• The bulk metallicity of giant planets around M stars
• On the structure and long-term evolution of ice-rich bodies
• A Holistic and Probabilistic Approach to the Ground-based Data of HAT-P-19 System
• In-depth characterization of the Kepler-10 three-planet system with HARPS-N radial velocities and Kepler transit timing variations
• Walking on exoplanets: Is Star Wars right?
• Planet Hunters NGTS: New Planet Candidates from a Citizen Science Search of the Next Generation Transit Survey Public Data
• The GAPS programme at TNG LXXI. A sub-Neptune suitable for atmospheric characterization in a multiplanet and mutually inclined system orbiting the bright K dwarf TOI-5789 (HIP 99452)
• Impact of rotation on synthetic mass-radius relationships of two-layer rocky planets and water worlds
• Observing transiting exoplanets with the MicroObservatory: 43 new transit light curves of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-32b
• The GAPS Programme at the TNG: LXX. TOI-5734b: A hot sub-Neptune orbiting a relatively young K dwarf with an Earth-like density