Influence of Planetary Rotation on Supersonic Flow of Lava Planets: A Two-Dimensional Horizontal Model Analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a two-dimensional model to analyze how planetary rotation affects the supersonic atmospheric flow of lava planets, revealing asymmetries caused by fast spin rates.

Contribution

It is the first to incorporate planetary rotation effects into a 2D atmospheric model for lava planets, extending previous axisymmetric studies.

Findings

Rotation induces asymmetric flow components.

Model sensitivity to Rossby number is assessed.

Asymmetric flows impact observational signatures.

Abstract

The study of lava planets has attracted significant attention recently because of their close proximity to their host stars, which enhances their detectability for atmospheric characterization. Previous studies showed that the atmospheric flow becomes supersonic if the atmosphere was dominated by rocky vapor evaporated from the magma ocean around the substellar point of small lava planets. These studies often assumed an axisymmetric flow about the axis from the substellar point to the antistellar point but ignored the effect of planetary rotation on the climate. The spin rate of lava planets can be rather fast due to their close-in orbits, which can break the aforementioned symmetry and induce the asymmetric flow component. Here, we introduce a two-dimensional framework to explore the influence of planetary rotation on the atmospheric dynamics of these lava planets for the first time, and assess the sensitivity and range of application of our model. Starting from the established one-dimensional axisymmetric atmospheric solution, we obtain the governing equation for the asymmetric flow by expanding with respect to 1/Ro (Ro denotes Rossby number and exceeds unity for typical lava planets). The asymmetric component of supersonic flow is pivotal for future research on the observation of these atmospheres, flow patterns of the magma ocean currents driven by atmospheric winds, and deformation of the planetary shape over long timescales.