Detectability of Rocky-Vapour Atmospheres on Super-Earths with Ariel

Abstract

Ariel will mark the dawn of a new era as the first large-scale survey characterising exoplanetary atmospheres with science objectives to address fundamental questions about planetary composition, evolution and formation. In this study, we explore the detectability of atmospheres vaporised from magma oceans on dry, rocky Super-Earths orbiting very close to their host stars. The detection of such atmospheres would provide a definitive piece of evidence for rocky planets but are challenging measurements with currently available instruments due to their small spectral signatures. However, some of the hottest planets are believed to have atmospheres composed of vaporised rock, such as Na and SiO, with spectral signatures bright enough to be detected through eclipse observations with planned space-based telescopes. In this study, we find that rocky super-Earths with a irradiation temperature of 3000 K and a distance from Earth of up to 20 pc, as well as planets hotter than 3500 K and closer than 50 pc, have SiO features which are potentially detectable in eclipse spectra observed with Ariel.

12 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy, Ariel Special Issue

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Ariel Target List: The Impact of TESS and the Potential for Characterising Multiple Planets Within a System
• Data availability and requirements relevant for the Ariel space mission and other exoplanet atmosphere applications
• LavAtmos: An open source chemical equilibrium vaporisation code for lava worlds
• Disentangling Atmospheric Compositions of K2-18 b with Next Generation Facilities