Searching for helium escape and a low density atmosphere around the 120 Myr old sub-Neptune HIP94235b using CRIRES+

TL;DR

This study used high-resolution spectroscopy to search for helium escape in the young sub-Neptune HIP94235b, finding no evidence of atmospheric mass loss, which suggests it lacks a significant hydrogen-helium envelope consistent with photoevaporation models.

Contribution

First high-resolution search for helium escape in a 120 Myr old sub-Neptune, setting upper limits on mass loss and constraining atmospheric composition.

Findings

No helium escape detected, upper limit of 10^11 g/s

No significant molecular absorption detected in transmission spectrum

Atmosphere likely lacks a large hydrogen-helium envelope

Abstract

Atmospheric mass loss is thought to induce the bimodality in the small planet population as we observe it today. Observationally, active mass loss can be traced by excess absorption in spectral lines of lighter species, such as the hydrogen Ly-alpha line and the metastable helium triplet. We search for helium escape from the young (120Myr old) sub-Neptune HIP94235b. We obtained two transit observations of HIP94235b using the CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES+) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT). We find no evidence for escaping helium across both visits, allowing us to place a mass loss rate upper limit of 10^11 g/s, based on 1D Parker wind models. Additionally, we search for molecular spectral features in the planet's transmission spectrum, and cross-correlate our observations with high-resolution template spectra for H2O, the dominating molecule in the Y-band. We detect no significant absorption. We demonstrate that some atmosphere models at 10x solar metallicity would have been retrievable if present. Through the null detection of neutral hydrogen and helium escape, we conclude the atmosphere of HIP94235b likely lacks a large hydrogen-helium envelope. This is consistent with the expectation of small planet photoevaporation models, which suggest most planets lose their primordial hydrogen-helium envelopes within 100Myr of evolution.