Habitability of Terrestrial-Mass Planets in the HZ of M Dwarfs. I. H/He-Dominated Atmospheres

TL;DR

This study models atmospheric escape on terrestrial planets in M dwarf habitable zones, finding that only low-mass cores can lose thick H/He envelopes to become potentially habitable.

Contribution

It improves hydrodynamic escape modeling by including radiative cooling and transition to ballistic escape, refining predictions of atmospheric loss.

Findings

Lower mass-loss rates than previous estimates.

Planets with cores less than 0.9 M⊕ can lose enough H/He to be habitable.

Cores ≥1 M⊕ with 1% H/He envelopes remain uninhabitable.

Abstract

The ubiquity of M dwarfs, combined with the relative ease of detecting terrestrial-mass planets around them, has made them prime targets for finding and characterising planets in the "Habitable Zone" (HZ). However, Kepler finds that terrestrial-mass exoplanets are often born with voluminous H/He envelopes, comprising mass-fractions ($M_{env}/M_{core}$) $\gtrsim 1$%. If these planets retain such envelopes over Gyr timescales, they will not be "habitable" even within the HZ. Given the strong X-ray/UV fluxes of M dwarfs, we study whether sufficient envelope mass can be photoevaporated away for these planets to become habitable. We improve upon previous work by using hydrodynamic models that account for radiative cooling as well as the transition from hydrodynamic to ballistic escape. Adopting a template active M dwarf XUV spectrum, including stellar evolution, and considering both evaporation and thermal evolution, we show that: (1) the mass-loss is (considerably) lower than previous estimates that use an "energy-limited" formalism and ignore the transition to Jeans escape, (2) at the inner edge of the HZ, planets with core mass $\lesssim 0.9$ M$_\oplus$, can lose enough H/He to become habitable if their initial envelope mass-fraction is $\sim$1%, (3) at the outer edge of the HZ, evaporation cannot remove a $\sim$1% H/He envelope even from cores down to 0.8 M$_\oplus$. Thus, if planets form with bulky H/He envelopes, only those with low-mass cores may eventually be habitable. Cores $\gtrsim$ 1 M$_\oplus$, with $\gtrsim$1% natal H/He envelopes, will not be habitable in the HZ of M dwarfs.