Molecular tracers of planet formation in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters

TL;DR

This study models hot Jupiter atmospheres to link molecular compositions with planetary formation and migration pathways, providing insights into their origins through chemical signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive chemical kinetics model across various elemental abundances to connect atmospheric molecules with planet formation scenarios.

Findings

Eight hot Jupiters' water abundances match formation models.

Two planets likely formed beyond the  snowline.

Molecular data suggests a formation between  and  snowlines for HD 209458 b.

Abstract

The atmospheric chemical composition of a hot Jupiter can lead to insights into where in its natal protoplanetary disk it formed and its subsequent migration pathway. We use a 1-D chemical kinetics code to compute a suite of models across a range of elemental abundances to investigate the resultant abundances of key molecules in hot jupiter atmospheres. Our parameter sweep spans metallicities between 0.1x and 10x solar values for the C/H, O/H and N/H ratios, and equilibrium temperatures of 1000K and 2000K. We link this parameter sweep to the formation and migration models from previous works to predict connections between the atmospheric molecular abundances and formation pathways, for the molecules \ce{H2O}, \ce{CO}, \ce{CH4}, \ce{CO2}, \ce{HCN} and \ce{NH3}. We investigate atmospheric \ce{H2O} abundances in eight hot Jupiters reported in the literature. All eight planets fall within our predicted ranges for various formation models, however six of them are degenerate between multiple models and, hence, require additional molecular detections for constraining their formation histories. The other two planets, HD 189733~b and HD 209458~b, have water abundances that fall within ranges expected from planets that formed beyond the \ce{CO2} snowline. Finally, we investigate the detections of \ce{H2O}, \ce{CO}, \ce{CH4}, \ce{CO2}, \ce{HCN} and \ce{NH3} in the atmosphere of HD 209458~b and find that, within the framework of our model, the abundances of these molecules best match with a planet that formed between the \ce{CO2} and \ce{CO} snowlines and then underwent disk-free migration to reach its current location.