# Acceleration of Cooling of Ice Giants by Condensation in Early Atmospheres

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that condensation of heavy elements in early ice giant atmospheres releases latent heat, maintaining high emission flux and accelerating planetary cooling, which explains observed brightness differences and aids future exoplanet imaging.

## Contribution

It introduces the impact of condensable species and latent heat on ice giant cooling, challenging previous assumptions of unchanged atmospheric composition during evolution.

## Key findings

- Condensation of heavy elements releases latent heat, affecting cooling rates.
- Latent heat prolongs high emission flux, accelerating cooling of ice giants.
- Enriched atmospheres make young ice giants brighter in mid-infrared.

## Abstract

The present infrared brightness of a planet originates partly from the accretion energy that the planet gained during its formation and hence provides important constraints to the planet formation process. A planet cools down from a hot initial state to the present state by losing energy through radiative emission from its atmosphere. Thus, the atmospheric properties affect the planetary cooling rate. Previous theories of giant planet cooling assume that the atmospheric composition is unchanged throughout evolution. Planet formation theories, however, suggest that the atmospheres especially of ice giants are rich in heavy elements in the early stages. Those heavy elements include condensable species such as water, ammonia, and methane, which are expected to have a great impact on atmospheric temperature and, thus, radiative emission through latent heat release. In this study we investigate the effect of such condensation on the planetary emission flux and quantify the impact on the cooling timescale. We then demonstrate that the latent heat of those species keeps the atmosphere hot and thus the emission flux high for billions of years, resulting in acceleration of the cooling of ice giants. This sheds light on the long-standing problem that Uranus is much less bright than theoretically predicted and is different in brightness from Neptune in spite of similarity in mass and radius. Also, we find that young ice giants with highly enriched atmospheres are much brighter in mid-infrared than those with unenriched atmospheres. This provides important implication for future direct imaging of extrasolar ice giants.