Search for helium in the upper atmosphere of the hot Jupiter WASP-127 b using Gemini/Phoenix

TL;DR

This study used the Gemini/Phoenix spectrograph to search for helium in the upper atmosphere of the hot Jupiter WASP-127 b, finding no significant helium absorption and providing constraints on atmospheric escape processes.

Contribution

First application of Phoenix spectrograph for helium detection in exoplanet atmosphere, setting upper limits and analyzing atmospheric escape in WASP-127 b.

Findings

No significant helium absorption detected

Set a 90% confidence upper limit of 0.87% for excess absorption

Unfavorable photoionization conditions likely explain the non-detection

Abstract

Large-scale exoplanet search surveys have shown evidence that atmospheric escape is a ubiquitous process that shapes the evolution and demographics of planets. However, we lack a detailed understanding of this process because very few exoplanets discovered to date could be probed for signatures of atmospheric escape. Recently, the metastable helium triplet at 1.083 $\mu$m has been shown to be a viable window for the presence of He-rich escaping envelopes around short-period exoplanets. Our objective is to use, for the first time, the Phoenix spectrograph to search for helium in the upper atmosphere of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-127 b. We observed one transit and reduced the data manually since there is no pipeline available. We did not find a significant in-transit absorption signal indicative of the presence of helium around WASP-127 b, and set a 90% confidence upper limit for excess absorption at 0.87% in a 0.075 nm passband covering the He triplet. Given the large scale height of this planet, the lack of a detectable feature is likely due to unfavorable photoionization conditions to populate the metastable He triplet. This conclusion is supported by the inferred low coronal and chromospheric activity of the host star and the old age of the system, which result in a relatively mild high-energy environment around the planet.