Descripción del proyecto
El estudio de la evaporación atmosférica planetaria arroja luz sobre la formación de planetas
A pesar de los avances en la investigación, aún no se conocen muy bien los procesos que conducen a la formación de planetas. Muchos exoplanetas, es decir, planetas que orbitan alrededor de estrellas distintas al Sol, tienen atmósferas volátiles. La proximidad a las estrellas hace que la capa superior de la atmósfera de los exoplanetas sea vulnerable a la pérdida de masa por la evaporación provocada por el calentamiento. Los socios del proyecto PEVAP han desempeñado recientemente un papel fundamental para determinar que la evaporación de las atmósferas planetarias impulsa la evolución de la población de exoplanetas observada. Este avance científico motiva que la comprensión de la evaporación sea crucial para descifrar la formación de exoplanetas. El objetivo del proyecto financiado con fondos europeos PEVAP es desarrollar los primeros modelos completos de evaporación en exoplanetas del mundo. El equipo del proyecto PEVAP ayudará a explicar cómo nacen los exoplanetas y responderá a preguntas clave sobre los procesos y efectos de la evaporación.
Objetivo
Modern astronomy has truly entered the exoplanet era. Although our knowledge of what planet formation produces has grown immensely thanks to observational advances, our actual understanding of the physical processes that give rise to planets and planetary systems is limited. We now know most stars are unlike our own Sun, in that they host planets which orbit around their star with periods of months or shorter, yet many have volatile rich atmospheres. These planets must result from a dominant (if not the dominant) mode of planet formation, yet they were completely missing from our planet formation theories a decade ago.
Planets which are close to their parent star are extremely vulnerable to mass-loss through evaporation, where UV/X-ray photons can heat their upper atmospheres to close to the escape temperature, causing them to lose-mass. Recently, I have played a leading role in showing that evaporation drives the evolution of the observed exoplanet population. Thus, the observed exoplanet population is not representative of the one at birth; to use it as a probe of planet formation we must understand evaporation. However, the evaporation of highly-irradiated planetary atmospheres is not well understood. This especially true for terrestrial planets where the atmospheres are dominated by heavy elements.
My team will use a combination of theory, simulations and observations to build the first global and comprehensive models of exoplanet evaporation. In doing this, my team will use evaporation as a window into planet formation by answering the following key questions:
1 What are the mass-loss rates and evaporative flow structures for the full spectrum of observed planets?
2 How can we use observations of evaporating planets to learn about their compositions and histories?
3 How does evaporation affect and control the evolution of planets and their atmospheres?
By understanding how exoplanets evaporate and evolve, my team will unveil the exoplanet population at birth.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
SW7 2AZ LONDON
Reino Unido