H- Opacity and Water Dissociation in the Dayside Atmosphere of the Very Hot Gas Giant WASP-18 b

TL;DR

This study presents high-precision emission spectra of the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-18 b, revealing the importance of H- opacity and thermal dissociation effects in interpreting spectra of very hot gas giants.

Contribution

It introduces the first detailed analysis including H- opacity and dissociation effects for a very hot gas giant, refining atmospheric composition and temperature profile estimates.

Findings

H- opacity significantly affects the spectrum.

Water and other molecules are dissociated at high temperatures.

The planet exhibits a thermal inversion in its atmosphere.

Abstract

We present one of the most precise emission spectra of an exoplanet observed so far. We combine five secondary eclipses of the hot Jupiter WASP-18 b (Tday=2900K) that we secured between 1.1 and 1.7 micron with the WFC3 instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. Our extracted spectrum (S/N=50, R=40) does not exhibit clearly identifiable molecular features but is poorly matched by a blackbody spectrum. We complement this data with previously published Spitzer/IRAC observations of this target and interpret the combined spectrum by computing a grid of self-consistent, 1D forward models, varying the composition and energy budget. At these high temperatures, we find there are important contributions to the overall opacity from H- ions, as well as the removal of major molecules by thermal dissociation (including water), and thermal ionization of metals. These effects were omitted in previous spectral retrievals for very hot gas giants, and we argue that they must be included to properly interpret the spectra of these objects. We infer a new metallicity and C/O ratio for WASP-18 b, and find them well constrained to be solar ([M/H]=-0.01 (0.35), C/O<0.85 at 3 sigma confidence level), unlike previous work but in line with expectations for giant planets. The best fitting self-consistent temperature-pressure profiles are inverted, resulting in an emission feature at 4.5 micron seen in the Spitzer photometry. These results further strengthen the evidence that the family of very hot gas giant exoplanets commonly exhibit thermal inversions.