Detectability of Emission from Exoplanet Outflows Calculated by pyTPCI, a New 1D Radiation-Hydrodynamic Code

TL;DR

This paper introduces pyTPCI, a new 1D radiative-hydrodynamics code, to model exoplanet outflows and assess their emission detectability, finding that certain spectral lines like Na I and helium are promising targets for detection.

Contribution

The paper presents pyTPCI, an improved open-source code for modeling exoplanet atmospheres and outflows, enabling the prediction of emission signals for observational detection.

Findings

Na I and helium lines are most detectable in exoplanet outflows.

HD 189733b shows the strongest emission signals among modeled planets.

Detection of these signals requires multiple high-resolution observations with large telescopes.

Abstract

Photoevaporation in exoplanet atmospheres is thought to contribute to the shaping of the small planet radius valley. Escaping atmospheres have been detected in transmission across a variety of exoplanet types, from hot Jupiters to mini-Neptunes. However, no work has yet considered whether outflows might also be detectable in emission. We introduce pyTPCI, a new, open-source self-consistent 1D radiative-hydrodynamics code that is an improved version of The PLUTO-CLOUDY Interface. We use pyTPCI to model seven exoplanets (HD 189733b, HD 209458b, WASP-69b, WASP-107b, TOI-1430b, TOI-560b, and HAT-P-32b) at varying metallicities and compute their emission spectra to investigate their detectability across a variety of spectral lines. We calculate the eclipse depths and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of these lines for a 10m class telescope with a high-resolution spectrograph, taking into account appropriate line broadening mechanisms. We show that the most detectable spectral lines tend to be the 589 nm Na I doublet and the 1083 nm metastable helium triplet. Halpha and Mg I 457 nm are moderately strong for some planets at some metallicities, but they are almost always optically thin, so some of their emission may not be from the outflow. The planet with the highest-flux, highest-eclipse-depth, and highest-SNR lines is HD 189733b, with a Na I eclipse depth of 410 ppm and SNR of 2.4 per eclipse, and a He* eclipse depth of 170 ppm and SNR of 1.3. These signals would be marginally detectable with Keck if 3-10 eclipses were observed, assuming (over-optimistically) photon limited observations.