Oxygen left behind: Atmospheric Enrichment due to Fractionation in Sub-Neptunes using BOREAS

TL;DR

This study models how atmospheric escape and chemical fractionation influence the evolution of exoplanet atmospheres, especially for sub-Neptunes, revealing conditions under which oxygen is retained or lost, affecting planetary composition.

Contribution

We introduce BOREAS, a self-consistent model coupling hydrodynamic escape with fractionation, to study atmospheric evolution of exoplanets across various parameters.

Findings

Oxygen is generally retained except under high XUV fluxes.

Sub-Neptunes can become water-rich over 200 Myr due to hydrogen escape.

Water-rich atmospheres may originate from initially water-poor envelopes.

Abstract

The evolution of exoplanetary atmospheres is strongly influenced by atmospheric escape, particularly for close-in planets. Fractionation during atmospheric loss can preferentially remove lighter elements such as hydrogen, while retaining heavier species like oxygen. In this study, we investigate how and under what conditions hydrodynamic escape and chemical fractionation jointly shape the mass and composition of exoplanet atmospheres, especially for mixed H2 + H2O atmospheres. We develop BOREAS, a self-consistent mass loss model coupling a 1D Parker wind formulation with a mass-dependent fractionation scheme, which we apply across a range of planet masses, radii, equilibrium temperatures, and incident XUV fluxes, allowing us to track hydrogen and oxygen escape rates at different snapshots in time. We find that oxygen is efficiently retained over most of the parameter space. Significant oxygen loss occurs under high incident XUV fluxes, while at intermediate fluxes oxygen loss is largely confined to low-gravity planets. Where oxygen is retained, irradiation is too weak to drive significant escape of hydrogen and thus limiting atmospheric enrichment. By contrast, our model predicts that sub-Neptunes undergo substantial atmospheric enrichment over approx. 200 Myr when hydrogen escape is efficient and accompanied by partial oxygen entrainment. Notably, our results imply that sub-Neptunes near the radius valley can evolve into water-rich planets, in agreement with GJ 9827 d. Present-day water-rich atmospheres may have originated from water-poor envelopes under some conditions, highlighting the need to include chemical fractionation in evolution models. BOREAS is publicly available.