YunMa: Enabling Spectral Retrievals of Exoplanetary Clouds

TL;DR

YunMa is a new exoplanet cloud simulation and retrieval tool that improves the interpretation of transit spectra by modeling cloud microphysics and radiative properties, validated against literature and tested on simulated atmospheres.

Contribution

The paper introduces YunMa, a novel cloud microphysics and radiative transfer package integrated with TauREx 3 for enhanced spectral retrievals of exoplanet atmospheres.

Findings

YunMa significantly improves cloud property retrieval accuracy.

Including cloud microphysics enhances spectral interpretation.

Performance varies with data quality and atmospheric composition.

Abstract

In this paper, we present YunMa, an exoplanet cloud simulation and retrieval package, which enables the study of cloud microphysics and radiative properties in exoplanetary atmospheres. YunMa simulates the vertical distribution and sizes of cloud particles and their corresponding scattering signature in transit spectra. We validated YunMa against results from the literature. When coupled to the TauREx 3 platform, an open Bayesian framework for spectral retrievals, YunMa enables the retrieval of the cloud properties and parameters from transit spectra of exoplanets. The sedimentation efficiency ($f_{\mathrm{sed}}$), which controls the cloud microphysics, is set as a free parameter in retrievals. We assess the retrieval performances of YunMa through 28 instances of a K2-18 b-like atmosphere with different fractions of H$_2$/He and N$_2$, and assuming water clouds. Our results show a substantial improvement in retrieval performances when using YunMa instead of a simple opaque cloud model and highlight the need to include cloud radiative transfer and microphysics to interpret the next-generation data for exoplanet atmospheres. This work also inspires instrumental development for future flagships by demonstrating retrieval performances with different data quality.