What Does "Metallicity" Mean When Interpreting Spectra of Exoplanetary Atmospheres?

TL;DR

This paper clarifies that the interpretation of 'metallicity' in exoplanet atmospheres is complex and model-dependent, emphasizing that water abundance does not straightforwardly translate to elemental oxygen abundance due to various influencing factors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that converting water abundance to O/H is non-trivial and depends on temperature, pressure, and chemical composition, challenging simplified assumptions in atmospheric metallicity estimates.

Findings

Water abundance is temperature- and pressure-dependent.

Conversion between water and O/H is not unity and varies with conditions.

Model assumptions significantly influence metallicity estimates.

Abstract

One of the desired outcomes of studying exoplanetary atmospheres is to set decisive constraints on exoplanet formation theories. Astronomers often speak of the "metallicity" in broad terms. When modeling the bulk metallicity, workers refer to the elemental iron abundance (Fe/H). By contrast, when exo-atmospheric astronomers speak of the "metallicity" derived from analysing low-resolution Hubble and Spitzer spectrophotometry, they are referring to the elemental abundances of oxygen (O/H), carbon (C/H) and nitrogen (N/H): in decreasing order of importance, since spectra from the Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 are primarily sensitive to water with secondary contributions from hydrogen cyanide and ammonia, while Spitzer photometry is sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide. From retrieving for the water abundances, workers such as Kreidberg et al. (2014), Wakeford et al. (2017, 2018), Arcangeli et al. (2018) and Mansfield et al. (2018) have published figures that show the "metallicity" versus the masses of the exoplanets. Even if we assume that bulk and atmospheric elemental abundances are equal, the motivation behind this research note is to demonstrate that the conversion between the water abundance and O/H is not straightforward. "Water at solar metallicity" is a temperature- and pressure-dependent statement, because there is no single value of the water volume mixing ratio corresponding to solar values of O/H and C/H. Overall, the conversion factor between the water volume mixing ratio and O/H is not unity and depends on temperature, pressure, O/H, C/H and C/O, even without invoking disequilibrium chemistry (photochemistry and/or atmospheric mixing). It remains unproven that disequilibrium chemistry or condensation will always return a conversion factor of unity. It is thus a fair statement to say that the "metallicity" estimates inferred from atmospheric retrievals are model-dependent.