On the likely magnesium-iron silicate dusty tails of catastrophically evaporating rocky planets

TL;DR

This paper models dust tails of evaporating rocky planets, constraining their composition to magnesium-iron silicates and analyzing the dust dynamics and optical properties to understand observed transit variability.

Contribution

It introduces a new self-consistent model of planetary dust tails, including dust trajectory and optical depth calculations, applied to KIC 1255b and K2-22b, revealing composition and dust dynamics insights.

Findings

Dust likely composed of magnesium-iron silicates.

Initial dust grain sizes around 1.25-1.75 μm.

Mass-loss rate approximately 3 Earth masses per Gyr.

Abstract

Catastrophically evaporating rocky planets provide a unique opportunity to study the composition of small planets. The surface composition of these planets can be constrained via modelling their comet-like tails of dust. In this work, we present a new self-consistent model of the dusty tails: we physically model the trajectory of the dust grains after they have left the gaseous outflow, including an on-the-fly calculation of the dust cloud's optical depth. We model two catastrophically evaporating planets: KIC 1255b and K2-22b. For both planets, we find the dust is likely composed of magnesium-iron silicates (olivine and pyroxene), consistent with an Earth-like composition. We constrain the initial dust grain sizes to be $\sim$ 1.25-1.75 $\mu$m and the average (dusty) planetary mass-loss rate to be $\sim$ 3$M_\oplus \mathrm{Gyr^{-1}}$. Our model shows the origin of the leading tail of dust of K2-22b is likely a combination of the geometry of the outflow and a low radiation pressure force to stellar gravitational force ratio. We find the optical depth of the dust cloud to be a factor of a few in the vicinity of the planet. Our composition constraint supports the recently suggested idea that the dusty outflows of these planets go through a greenhouse effect-nuclear winter cycle, which gives origin to the observed transit depth time variability. Magnesium-iron silicates have the necessary visible-to-infrared opacity ratio to give origin to this cycle in the high mass-loss state.