Detectability of biosignatures in anoxic atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope: A TRAPPIST-1e case study

TL;DR

This study assesses JWST's ability to detect biosignatures like methane and carbon dioxide in anoxic exoplanet atmospheres, focusing on TRAPPIST-1e, and finds that a limited number of transits could reveal signs of life.

Contribution

It demonstrates that JWST can potentially detect biosignatures in anoxic atmospheres through transit spectroscopy, emphasizing methane and carbon dioxide detection in a case study of TRAPPIST-1e.

Findings

Approximately 10 transits may suffice to detect CO2 and constrain CH4.

Detection of biosignatures is robust against clouds and noise assumptions.

Upper limits on CO could help distinguish biological from non-biological methane sources.

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be capable of finding biogenic gases in the atmospheres of habitable exoplanets around low mass stars. Considerable attention has been given to the detectability of biogenic oxygen, which could be found using an ozone proxy, but ozone detection with JWST will be extremely challenging, even for the most favorable targets. Here, we investigate the detectability of biosignatures in anoxic atmospheres analogous to those that likely existed on the early Earth. Arguably, such anoxic biosignatures could be more prevalent than oxygen biosignatures if life exists elsewhere. Specifically, we simulate JWST retrievals of TRAPPIST-1e to determine whether the methane plus carbon dioxide disequilibrium biosignature pair is detectable in transit transmission. We find that ~10 transits using the Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) prism instrument may be sufficient to detect carbon dioxide and constrain methane abundances sufficiently well to rule out known, non-biological CH$_{4}$ production scenarios to ~90% confidence. Furthermore, it might be possible to put an upper limit on carbon monoxide abundances that would help rule out non-biological methane-production scenarios, assuming the surface biosphere would efficiently drawdown atmospheric CO. Our results are relatively insensitive to high altitude clouds and instrument noise floor assumptions, although stellar heterogeneity and variability may present challenges.