Ab initio equations of state for hydrogen (H-REOS.3) and helium (He-REOS.3) and their implications for the interior of Brown Dwarfs

TL;DR

This paper introduces new ab initio equations of state for hydrogen and helium, covering wide temperature and density ranges, and applies them to model the interiors of Jupiter, Brown Dwarfs, and giant planets, providing improved predictions of their internal properties.

Contribution

The paper provides updated, comprehensive EOS tables for hydrogen and helium based on ab initio calculations, extending the data to strongly correlated regimes and connecting with other models.

Findings

EOS data improve interior models of Jupiter and Brown Dwarfs.

Predicted central pressures and densities differ by up to 10% with different EOS.

EOS tables are publicly available for further research.

Abstract

We present new equations of state (EOS) for hydrogen and helium covering a wide range of temperatures from 60 K to 10$^7$ K and densities from $10^{-10}$ g/cm$^3$ to $10^3$ g/cm$^3$. They include an extended set of ab initio EOS data for the strongly correlated quantum regime with an accurate connection to data derived from other approaches for the neighboring regions. We compare linear-mixing isotherms based on our EOS tables with available real-mixture data. A first important astrophysical application of this new EOS data is the calculation of interior models for Jupiter and the comparison with recent results. Secondly, mass-radius relations are calculated for Brown Dwarfs which we compare with predictions derived from the widely used EOS of Saumon, Chabrier and van Horn. Furthermore, we calculate interior models for typical Brown Dwarfs with different masses, namely Corot-3b, Gliese-229b and Corot-15b, and the Giant Planet KOI-889b. The predictions for the central pressures and densities differ by up to 10$\%$ dependent on the EOS used. Our EOS tables are made available in the supplemental material of this paper.