TauREx3 PhaseCurve: A 1.5D model for phase curve description

Abstract

In the recent years, retrieval analysis of exoplanet atmospheres have been very successful, providing deep insights on the composition and the temperature structure of these worlds via the transit and eclipse methods. Analysis of spectral phase curve observations, which in theory provides even more information, are still limited to a few planets. In the next decade, new facilities such as NASA-JWST and ESA-Ariel will revolutionise the field of exoplanet atmospheres and we expect that a significant time will be spent on spectral phase curve observations. Most current models are still limited in their analysis of phase curve data as they do not consider the planet atmosphere as a whole or they require large computational resources. In this paper we present a semi-analytical model that will allow to compute exoplanet emission spectra at different phase angles. Our model provides a way to simulate a large number of observations while being only about 4 times slower than the traditional forward model for plane parallel primary eclipse. This model, which is based on the newly developed TauREx3 framework (Al-Refaie 2020), will be further developed to allow for phase curve atmospheric retrievals.

Accepted in ApJ, 18 pages, 10 figures

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• Five key exoplanet questions answered via the analysis of 25 hot Jupiter atmospheres in eclipse
• Diurnal variations in the stratosphere of the ultrahot giant exoplanet WASP-121b
• 2D Retrieval Frameworks for Hot Jupiter Phase Curves
• The Hubble WFC3 Emission Spectrum of the Extremely-Hot Jupiter, KELT-9b
• On spectroscopic phase-curve retrievals: H2 dissociation and thermal inversion in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-103 b
• Cloudy and Cloud-free Thermal Phase Curves with PICASO: Applications to WASP-43b
• Impact of Variable Photospheric Radius on Exoplanet Atmospheric Retrievals