The Space Weather of Proxima Centauri b
Cecilia Garraffo, Jeremy J. Drake, Ofer Cohen

TL;DR
This study models the stellar wind environment of Proxima Centauri b, revealing extreme wind pressures and dynamic magnetic conditions that could significantly impact its atmosphere and habitability.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed 3-D MHD simulations of Proxima Centauri's stellar wind affecting Proxima b, highlighting extreme conditions not previously characterized.
Findings
Proxima b experiences stellar wind pressures over 2000 times Earth's solar wind.
The magnetopause standoff distance varies by a factor of 2 to 5 during its orbit.
Proxima b frequently crosses into subsonic wind regions and the current sheet.
Abstract
A planet orbiting in the "habitable zone" of our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, has recently been discovered, and the next natural question is whether or not Proxima b is "habitable". Stellar winds are likely a source of atmospheric erosion that could be particularly severe in the case of M dwarf habitable zone planets that reside close to their parent star. Here we study the stellar wind conditions that Proxima b experiences over its orbit. We construct 3-D MHD models of the wind and magnetic field around Proxima Centauri using a surface magnetic field map for a star of the same spectral type and scaled to match the observed ~ 600 G surface magnetic field strength of Proxima. We examine the wind conditions and dynamic pressure over different plausible orbits that sample the constrained parameters of the orbit of Proxima b. For all the parameter space explored, the planet…
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