Theoretical transmission spectra of exoplanet atmospheres with hydrocarbon haze: Effect of creation, growth, and settling of haze particles. I. Model description and first results

TL;DR

This paper models the formation, growth, and distribution of hydrocarbon haze particles in exoplanet atmospheres to explain the observed diversity in transmission spectra, highlighting the role of UV irradiation in haze production.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model that simulates haze particle creation, growth, and settling, providing a more realistic distribution of haze in exoplanet atmospheres compared to previous assumptions.

Findings

Haze particles are more broadly distributed than previously thought.

Haze particle size varies significantly within the atmosphere.

Differences in UV irradiation explain the diversity in observed spectra.

Abstract

Recently, properties of exoplanet atmospheres have been constrained via multi-wavelength transit observation, which measures an apparent decrease in stellar brightness during planetary transit in front of its host star (called transit depth). Sets of transit depths so far measured at different wavelengths (called transmission spectra) are somewhat diverse: Some show steep spectral slope features in the visible, some contain featureless spectra in the near-infrared, some show distinct features from radiative absorption by gaseous species. These facts infer the existence of haze in the atmospheres especially of warm, relatively low-density super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. Previous studies that addressed theoretical modeling of transmission spectra of hydrogen-dominated atmospheres with haze used some assumed distribution and size of haze particles. In this study, we model the atmospheric chemistry, derive the spatial and size distributions of haze particles by simulating the creation, growth and settling of hydrocarbon haze particles directly, and develop transmission spectrum models of UV-irradiated, solar-abundance atmospheres of close-in warm ($\sim$ 500 K) exoplanets. We find that the haze is distributed in the atmosphere much more broadly than previously assumed and consists of particles of various sizes. We also demonstrate that the observed diversity of transmission spectra can be explained by the difference in the production rate of haze monomers, which is related to the UV irradiation intensity from host stars.