Sparkling nights and very hot days on WASP-18b: the formation of clouds and the emergence of an ionosphere
Abstract
Context. WASP-18b is an ultra-hot Jupiter with a temperature difference of up to 2500 K between day and night. Such giant planets begin to emerge as a planetary laboratory for understanding cloud formation and gas chemistry in well-tested parameter regimes in order to better understand planetary mass loss and for linking observed element ratios to planet formation and evolution.
Aims: We aim to understand where clouds form, their interaction with the gas-phase chemistry through depletion and enrichment, the ionisation of the atmospheric gas, and the possible emergence of an ionosphere on ultra-hot Jupiters.
Methods: We used 1D profiles from a 3D atmosphere simulation for WASP-18b as input for kinetic cloud formation and gas-phase chemical equilibrium calculations. We solved our kinetic cloud formation model for these 1D profiles, which sample the atmosphere of WASP-18b at 16 different locations along the equator and in the mid-latitudes. We derived the gas-phase composition consistently.
Results: The dayside of WASP-18b emerges as completely cloud-free as a result of the very high atmospheric temperatures. In contrast, the nightside is covered in geometrically extended and chemically heterogeneous clouds with dispersed particle size distributions. The atmospheric C/O ratio increases to >0.7 and the enrichment of the atmospheric gas with cloud particles is ρd/ρgas > 10-3. The clouds that form at the limbs appear located farther inside the atmosphere, and they are the least extended. Not all day- to nightside terminator regions form clouds. The gas phase is dominated by H2, CO, SiO, H2O, H2S, CH4, and SiS. In addition, the dayside has a substantial degree of ionisation that is due to ions such as Na+, K+, Ca+, and Fe+. Al+ and Ti+ are the most abundant of their element classes. We find that WASP-18b, as one example for ultra-hot Jupiters, develops an ionosphere on the dayside.
- Publication:
-
Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- June 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1051/0004-6361/201834085
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1901.08640
- Bibcode:
- 2019A&A...626A.133H
- Keywords:
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- astrochemistry;
- planets and satellites: atmospheres;
- solid state: refractory;
- planets and satellites: gaseous planets;
- infrared: planetary systems;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 31 pages, accepted for publication in A&