The carbon-to-oxygen ratio: implications for the spectra of hydrogen-dominated exoplanet atmospheres (article)
Drummond, B; Carter, A; Hébrard, ECF; et al.Mayne, N; Sing, D; Evans, T; Goyal, J
Date: 29 March 2019
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP) / Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher DOI
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Abstract
We present results from one-dimensional atmospheric simulations investigating
the effect of varying the carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio on the thermal structure,
chemical composition and transmission and emission spectra, for irradiated hydrogendominated atmospheres. We find that each of these properties of the atmosphere are
strongly ...
We present results from one-dimensional atmospheric simulations investigating
the effect of varying the carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio on the thermal structure,
chemical composition and transmission and emission spectra, for irradiated hydrogendominated atmospheres. We find that each of these properties of the atmosphere are
strongly dependent on the individual abundances (relative to hydrogen) of carbon
and oxygen. We confirm previous findings that different chemical equilibrium compositions result from different sets of element abundances but with the same C/O ratio.
We investigate the effect of this difference in composition on the thermal structure and
simulated spectra. We also simulate observations using the PandExo tool and show
that these differences are observationally significant with current (i.e. Hubble Space
Telescope) and future (i.e. James Webb Space Telescope) instruments. We conclude
that it is important to consider the full set of individual element abundances, with
respect to hydrogen, rather than the ratios of only two elements, such as the C/O
ratio, particularly when comparing model predictions with observed transmission and
emission spectra.
Physics and Astronomy
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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