Planetary evaporation by UV & X-ray radiation: basic hydrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper models the hydrodynamic evaporation of close-in planets due to stellar EUV and X-ray radiation, revealing distinct regimes and implications for planetary evolution, especially for lower mass planets like hot Neptunes and super Earths.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive hydrodynamical model including both X-ray and EUV heating, and analyzes the evolution of planetary atmospheres under stellar high-energy radiation.

Findings

Most close-in planets evaporate hydrodynamically in two regimes: X-ray and EUV driven.

Mass-loss rates depend on stellar luminosity, planet distance, and density, with rates up to 10^14 g/s.

Lower density and higher mass planets evaporate more rapidly, especially in the hot Neptune regime.

Abstract

We consider the evaporation of close in planets by the star's intrinsic EUV and X-ray radiation. We calculate evaporation rates by solving the hydrodynamical problem for planetary evaporation including heating from both X-ray and EUV radiation. We show that most close-in planets (a<0.1 AU) are evaporating hydrodynamically, with the evaporation occurring in two distinct regimes: X-ray driven, in which the X-ray heated flow contains a sonic point, and EUV driven, in which the X-ray region is entirely sub-sonic. The mass-loss rates scale as L_X/a^2 for X-ray driven evaporation, and as Phi_*^{1/2}/a for EUV driven evaporation at early times, with mass-loss rates of order 10e10-10e14 g/s. No exact scaling exists for the mass-loss rate with planet mass and planet radius, however, in general evaporation proceeds more rapidly for planets with lower densities and higher masses. Furthermore, we find that in general the transition from X-ray driven to EUV driven evaporation occurs at lower X-ray luminosities for planets closer to their parent stars and for planets with lower densities. Coupling our evaporation models to the evolution of the high energy radiation - which falls with time - we are able to follow the evolution of evaporating planets. We find that most planets start off evaporating in the X-ray driven regime, but switch to EUV driven once the X-ray luminosity falls below a critical value. The evolution models suggest that while `hot Jupiters' are evaporating, they are not evaporating at a rate sufficient to remove the entire gaseous envelope on Gyr time-scales. However, we do find that close in Neptune mass planets are more susceptible to complete evaporation of their envelopes. Thus we conclude that planetary evaporation is more important for lower mass planets, particularly those in the `hot Neptune'/`super Earth' regime.