Beyond Equilibrium Temperature: How the Atmosphere/Interior Connection Affects the Onset of Methane, Ammonia, and Clouds in Warm Transiting Giant Planets

TL;DR

This paper explores how the interior and atmospheric connection influences chemical transitions and cloud formation in warm transiting giant planets below 1300 K, revealing complex non-equilibrium chemistry effects that differ from brown dwarfs.

Contribution

It demonstrates that planetary cooling history, mass, and age significantly affect atmospheric chemistry, challenging equilibrium-based expectations and providing new observational strategies.

Findings

Non-equilibrium chemistry alters methane and ammonia detectability.

Cooling history can dominate atmospheric composition over equilibrium temperature.

Eccentricity-driven tidal heating impacts atmospheric chemistry in Neptune-class planets.

Abstract

The atmospheric pressure-temperature profiles for transiting giant planets cross a range of chemical transitions. Here we show that the particular shape of these irradiated profiles for warm giant planets below 1300 K lead to striking differences in the behavior of non-equilibrium chemistry compared to brown dwarfs of similar temperatures. Our particular focus is H$_2$O, CO, CH$_4$, CO$_2$, and NH$_3$ in Jupiter- and Neptune-class planets. We show the cooling history of a planet, which depends most significantly on planetary mass and age, can have a dominant effect on abundances in the visible atmosphere, often swamping trends one might expect based on Teq alone. The onset of detectable CH$_4$ in spectra can be delayed to lower Teq for some planets compared to equilibrium, or pushed to higher Teq. The detectability of NH$_3$ is typically enhanced compared to equilibrium expectations, which is opposite to the brown dwarf case. We find that both CH$_4$ and NH$_3$ can become detectable at around the same Teq (at Teq values that vary with mass and metallicity) whereas these "onset" temperatures are widely spaced for brown dwarfs. We suggest observational strategies to search for atmospheric trends and stress that non-equilibrium chemistry and clouds can serve as probes of atmospheric physics. As examples of atmospheric complexity, we assess three Neptune-class planets GJ 436b, GJ 3470b, and WASP-107, all around Teq=700 K. Tidal heating due to eccentricity damping in all three planets heats the deep atmosphere by thousands of degrees, and may explain the absence of CH$_4$ in these cool atmospheres. Atmospheric abundances must be interpreted in the context of physical characteristics of the planet.