Compositions of Hot Super-earth Atmospheres: Exploring Kepler Candidates

This paper outlines a simple approach to evaluate the atmospheric composition of hot rocky planets by assuming different types of planetary composition and using corresponding model calculations. To explore hot atmospheres above 1000 K, we model the vaporization of silicate magma and estimate the range of atmospheric compositions according to the planet's radius and semi-major axis for the Kepler 2011 February data release. Our results show five atmospheric types for hot, rocky super-Earth atmospheres, strongly dependent on the initial composition and the planet's distance to the star. We provide a simple set of parameters that can be used to evaluate atmospheric compositions for current and future candidates provided by the Kepler mission and other searches.