Interior-atmosphere modelling to assess the observability of rocky planets with JWST

TL;DR

This paper develops a self-consistent interior-atmosphere model to predict the observability of rocky exoplanets with JWST, helping distinguish between bare surfaces and atmospheres through emission spectroscopy.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled interior-atmosphere modeling approach that estimates volatile content, surface pressure, and temperature, aiding interpretation of JWST observations of rocky planets.

Findings

TRAPPIST-1 c likely has a bare surface or a thin atmosphere.

Estimated surface pressure for water-rich atmospheres is around 40 ± 40 bar.

Spectral analysis can identify water vapor even with high observational uncertainties.

Abstract

There is a degeneracy in the interior structure between a planet that has no atmosphere and a small Fe content, and a planet that has a thin atmosphere and a higher core mass fraction. We present a self-consistent interior-atmosphere model to constrain the volatile mass fraction, surface pressure, and temperature of rocky planets with water and CO$_{2}$ atmospheres. The parameters obtained in our analysis can be used to predict observations in emission spectroscopy and photometry with JWST, which can determine the presence of an atmosphere and, if present, its composition. We coupled a 1D interior model with a supercritical water layer to an atmospheric model. In order to obtain the bolometric emission and Bond albedo for an atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium, we used a low-resolution k-correlated model within our retrieval of planetary mass, radius, and host stellar abundances. We generated emission spectra with the same model at a higher resolution (R = 200-300). An adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo was employed for an efficient sampling of the parameter space at low volatile mass fractions. From our interior structure retrieval, TRAPPIST-1 c is most likely to present a bare surface, although the presence of an atmosphere cannot be ruled out. We estimate a 1$\sigma$ confidence interval of the surface pressure for a water-dominated atmosphere of $P_{surf} = 40 \pm 40$ bar. We generated spectra for these two scenarios to compare with the emission flux of TRAPPIST-1 c recently observed in the MIRI F1500W filter. This is compatible with bare rock surfaces or a thin atmosphere with little or no CO$_{2}$. In the case of 55 Cancri e, a combined spectrum with NIRCam and MIRI LRS may present high uncertainties at wavelengths between 3 and 3.7 $\mu$m. However, this does not affect the identification of H$_{2}$O because it does not present spectral features in this wavelength range.