Stellar Wind -- Magnetosphere Interactions in Hot Jupiters

Abstract

One potential star-planet interaction mechanism for hot Jupiters involves planetary heating via currents set up by interactions between the stellar wind and planetary magnetosphere. Early modeling results indicate that such currents, which are analogous to the terrestrial global electric circuit (GEC), have the potential to provide sufficient heating to account for the additional radius inflation seen in some hot Jupiters. Here we present a more detailed model of this phenomenon, exploring the scale of the effect, the circumstances under which it is likely to be significant, implications for the planetary magnetospheric structure, and observational signatures.

3 pages, 4 figures To appear in IAU Symposium 320, "Solar and Stellar Flares and Their Effects on Planets", eds. A.G. Kosovichev, S.L. Hawley, and P. Heinzel

References in corpus (5)

• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
• Inflating Hot Jupiters With Ohmic Dissipation
• Forecasting Solar Wind Speeds
• Stellar Magnetic Fields as a Heating Source for Extrasolar Giant Planets
• Thermo-Resistive Instability of Hot Planetary Atmospheres