A High Internal Heat Flux and Large Core in a Warm Neptune Exoplanet

Luis Welbanks; Taylor J. Bell; Thomas G. Beatty; Michael R. Line; Kazumasa Ohno; Jonathan J. Fortney; Everett Schlawin; Thomas P. Greene; Emily Rauscher; Peter McGill; Matthew Murphy; Vivien Parmentier; Yao Tang; Isaac Edelman; Sagnick Mukherjee; Lindsey S. Wiser; Pierre-Olivier Lagage; Achrène Dyrek; Kenneth E. Arnold

doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07514-w

paper

A High Internal Heat Flux and Large Core in a Warm Neptune Exoplanet

arXiv:2405.11018 · doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07514-w

Abstract

Interactions between exoplanetary atmospheres and internal properties have long been hypothesized to be drivers of the inflation mechanisms of gaseous planets and apparent atmospheric chemical disequilibrium conditions. However, transmission spectra of exoplanets has been limited in its ability to observational confirm these theories due to the limited wavelength coverage of HST and inferences of single molecules, mostly H $_{2}$ O. In this work, we present the panchromatic transmission spectrum of the approximately 750 K, low-density, Neptune-sized exoplanet WASP-107b using a combination of HST WFC3, JWST NIRCam and MIRI. From this spectrum, we detect spectroscopic features due to H $_{2}$ O (21 $σ$ ), CH $_{4}$ (5 $σ$ ), CO (7 $σ$ ), CO $_{2}$ (29 $σ$ ), SO $_{2}$ (9 $σ$ ), and NH $_{3}$ (6 $σ$ ). The presence of these molecules enable constraints on the atmospheric metal enrichment (M/H is 10--18 $\times$ Solar), vertical mixing strength (log $_{10}$ K $_{z z}$ =8.4--9.0 cm $^{2}$ s $^{- 1}$ ), and internal temperature ( $>$ 345 K). The high internal temperature is suggestive of tidally-driven inflation acting upon a Neptune-like internal structure, which can naturally explain the planet's large radius and low density. These findings suggest that eccentricity driven tidal heating is a critical process governing atmospheric chemistry and interior structure inferences for a majority of the cool ( $<$ 1,000K) super-Earth-to-Saturn mass exoplanet population.

This preprint has not undergone any substantive post-submission improvements or corrections. The Version of Record of this article is published in Nature here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07514-w

A High Internal Heat Flux and Large Core in a Warm Neptune Exoplanet

Abstract

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