The role of cloud particle properties on WASP-39b transmission spectrum based on JWST/NIRSpec observations

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that JWST/NIRSpec transmission spectra can effectively constrain aerosol properties in exoplanet atmospheres, influencing gas abundance retrievals and advancing understanding of cloud physics.

Contribution

The paper introduces Bayesian retrieval methods using JWST data to analyze aerosol properties and their impact on exoplanet transmission spectra, highlighting the importance of aerosol modeling.

Findings

Models with wavelength-dependent aerosol extinction fit data better.

Weakly increasing aerosol extinction is favored by the data.

Aerosol properties significantly influence molecular abundance retrievals.

Abstract

Aerosols are capable of having a huge influence on reflected, emitted and transmitted planetary spectra. The Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) using the PRISM mode on board of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is providing valuable data of transit spectra over a wide spectral range that is able to cover the whole contribution of aerosols, potentially disentangling them from other constituents and thus allowing to constrain their properties. We aim to investigate whether NIRSpec/PRISM JWST transmission spectroscopy observations, in addition to being useful to detect and determine the abundance of gases more accurately than any previous instruments, are also capable of studying the physical properties of the aerosols in exoplanetary atmospheres. We perform nested sampling Bayesian retrievals with MultiNest library. We use the Planetary Spectrum Generator (PSG) and the Modelled Optical Properties of enSeMbles of Aerosol Particles (MOPSMAP) database as tools for the forward simulations and NIRSpec/PRISM JWST previously published observations of WASP-39b as input data. Retrievals indicate that models including an aerosol extinction weakly increasing or sharply decreasing with wavelength are decisively better than those with a flat transmission and that this increased degree of complexity is supported by the kind of data that JWST/NIRSpec can provide. Given other physical constraints from previous works, the scenario of weakly increasing particle extinction is favoured. We also find that this also has an effect on the retrieved gas abundances. JWST observations have the potential to study some physical characteristics of exoplanetary clouds, in particular their overall dependence of transmissivity with wavelength. In fact, it is important to implement more detailed aerosol models as their extinction may affect significantly retrieved molecular abundances.