The Influence of Dust Formation Modelling on Na I and K I Line Profiles in Substellar Atmospheres

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different dust formation models influence the spectral line profiles of sodium and potassium in substellar atmospheres, highlighting the importance of cloud treatment in atmospheric simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic dust formation model coupled with radiative transfer calculations to study alkali line profiles in brown dwarf and giant planet atmospheres.

Findings

Dust formation models significantly affect alkali line profiles.

Kinetic dust formation results in higher pseudo-continuum levels.

Line profiles are sensitive to cloud treatment methods.

Abstract

We aim to understand the correlation between cloud formation and alkali line formation in substellar atmospheres.We perform line profile calculations for Na I and K I based on the coupling of our kinetic model for the formation and composition of dust grains with 1D radiative transfer calculations in atmosphere models for brown dwarfs and giant gas planets. The Na I and K I line profiles sensibly depend on the way clouds are treated in substellar atmosphere simulations. The kinetic dust formation model results in the highest pseudo-continuum compared to the limiting cases.