Destination exoplanet: Habitability conditions influenced bystellar winds properties

TL;DR

This study investigates how stellar wind properties from solar-like stars influence exoplanet habitability, emphasizing the importance of magnetic field topology and the Alfvén surface in star-planet interactions.

Contribution

It applies a detailed 3D physics-based model to explore the scaling of stellar wind properties and highlights the role of magnetic topology in shaping stellar winds.

Findings

Magnetic field topology significantly affects wind speed and mass loss.

Characterizing the Alfvén surface is crucial for understanding star-planet interactions.

Wind properties vary with magnetic configurations on the stellar surface.

Abstract

The cumulative effect of the magnetized stellar winds on exoplanets dominates over other forms of star-planet interactions. When combined with photoevaporation, these winds will lead to atmospheric erosion. This is directly connected with the concept of Habitable Zone (HZ) planets around late-type stars. Our knowledge of these magnetized winds is limited, making numerical models useful tools to explore them. In this preliminary study, we focus on solar-like stars exploring how different stellar wind properties scale with one another. We used one of the most detailed physics-based models, the 3D Alfv\'en Wave Solar Model part of the Space Weather ModelingFramework, and applied it to the stellar winds domain. Our simulations showed that the magnetic field topology on the star surface plays a fundamental role in shaping the different stellar wind properties (wind speed, mass loss rate, angular momentum loss rate). We conclude that a characterization of the Alfv\'en surface is crucial when studying star-planet interaction as it can serve as an inner-boundary of the HZ