Grain Growth in Escaping Atmospheres: Implications for the Radius Inflation of Super-Puffs

TL;DR

This study models grain growth in escaping super-puff atmospheres, showing how high-altitude dust can significantly inflate observed planetary radii and obscure spectral features, with implications for their formation and rarity.

Contribution

It introduces a microphysical model of dust growth in escaping atmospheres, highlighting the importance of high-altitude dust production for radius inflation and spectral characteristics.

Findings

Dust growth hinders upward transport of grains.

High-altitude dust production can double the observable radius.

Dust obscures molecular features in transmission spectra.

Abstract

Super-puffs -- low-mass exoplanets with extremely low bulk density -- are attractive targets for exploring their atmospheres and formation processes. Recent studies suggested that the large radii of super-puffs may be caused by atmospheric dust entrained in the escaping atmospheres. In this study, we investigate how the dust grows in escaping atmospheres and influence the transit radii using a microphysical model of grain growth. Collision growth is efficient in many cases, leading to hinder the upward transport of dust via enhanced gravitational settling. We find that dust abundance in the outflow hardly exceeds the Mach number at the dust production region. Thus, dust formed at upper atmospheres, say $P\lesssim{10}^{-5}$ bar, are needed to launch a dusty outflow with high dust abundance. With sufficiently high dust production altitudes and rates, the dusty outflow can enhance the observable radius by a factor of $\sim$2 or even more. We suggest that photochemical haze is a promising candidate of high-altitude dust that can be entrained in the outflow. We also compute the synthetic transmission spectra of super-puff atmospheres and demonstrate that the dusty outflow produces a broad spectral slope and obscures molecular features, in agreement with recently reported featureless spectra. Lastly, using an interior structure model, we suggest that the atmospheric dust could drastically enhance the observable radius only for planets in a narrow mass range of $\sim2$--$5M_{\rm \oplus}$, in which the boil-off tends to cause total atmospheric loss. This may explain why super-puffs are uncommon despite the suggested universality of photochemical hazes.