Final Report Summary - E3ARTHS (Exoplanets and Early Earth Atmospheric Research: THeories and Simulations)
In less than two decades, exoplanet surveys have revealed a fantastic diversity of extrasolar worlds and systems. During the last years of this exploration, observations of transiting exoplanets (planets that periodically pass in front and behind their star) started to probe the physical and chemical nature of their atmosphere, expanding the field of comparative planetary science from the 8 planets of the solar system to the countless planets of our galactic neighborhood.With the current observations these atmospheric studies are restricted to hot (500-2500K) exoplanets. This hot sample provides, however, a serendipitous opportunity to address the formation and evolution of atmospheres as well as the variety of climatic and chemical regimes. This pioneer science will benefit from new instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (NASA/ESA) and the E-ELT (ESO) and represents the prologue to one of the most exciting challenge of the XXIst century: the characterization of habitable exoplanets.
In this context, E3ARTHs participants have developed new models to simulate the 3D thermal, dynamical and chemical structure of exoplanet atmospheres. With these models, they have studied and explored the diversity of exoplanets from habitable worlds to hot gas giants. Simulations are set in the context of the host star and planetary system, including when necessary the tidal evolution of the rotation and obliquity. For each of these simulations they have generated time- and geometry-dependent synthetic spectra and used them to produce virtual observations as they will be obtained with the next generation of telescopes.
With these models, E3ARTHs members contributed to reveal, among a growing population of thousands of exoplanets, those that are potentially habitable, including the first one, GJ581d and the first Earth-sized one, Kepler 186f.
In addition to these new models, the project E3ARTHs provided a complete new set of kinetic data as well as photochemical data that are necessary to hot exoplanet atmospheres. E3ARTHs also contributed to the set up of the database KIDA (KInetic Data for Astrochemistry) that provides and recommand kinetic data to study different astrophysical environments.
In this context, E3ARTHs participants have developed new models to simulate the 3D thermal, dynamical and chemical structure of exoplanet atmospheres. With these models, they have studied and explored the diversity of exoplanets from habitable worlds to hot gas giants. Simulations are set in the context of the host star and planetary system, including when necessary the tidal evolution of the rotation and obliquity. For each of these simulations they have generated time- and geometry-dependent synthetic spectra and used them to produce virtual observations as they will be obtained with the next generation of telescopes.
With these models, E3ARTHs members contributed to reveal, among a growing population of thousands of exoplanets, those that are potentially habitable, including the first one, GJ581d and the first Earth-sized one, Kepler 186f.
In addition to these new models, the project E3ARTHs provided a complete new set of kinetic data as well as photochemical data that are necessary to hot exoplanet atmospheres. E3ARTHs also contributed to the set up of the database KIDA (KInetic Data for Astrochemistry) that provides and recommand kinetic data to study different astrophysical environments.