Cloudy with a chance of metals: Indications of CO$_2$ in the atmosphere of GJ 1214 b from high-resolution K-band spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution K-band spectroscopy to investigate GJ 1214 b's atmosphere, finding tentative evidence for CO2 and setting upper limits on other molecules, thus supporting CO2 as a significant atmospheric component.

Contribution

First high-resolution transmission spectroscopy of GJ 1214 b with CRIRES+ revealing potential CO2 detection and constraining atmospheric composition with Bayesian retrievals.

Findings

Tentative CO2 detection at S/N ~ 3.6 with no clear noise correlation.

Upper limits established for H2O, CH4, H2S, NH3.

Bayesian analysis suggests metallicity around [M/H]=0.48 with large uncertainties.

Abstract

Sub-Neptune exoplanets frequently exhibit muted transmission spectra, with GJ 1214 b being the most prominent example. Following years of intense observing campaigns yielding featureless planetary spectra, recent observations with JWST revealed the first possible atmospheric signatures. We present high-resolution transmission spectroscopy of GJ 1214 b based on eight transits obtained with the CRIRES$^+$ spectrograph in the K band. We used SYSREM to remove telluric and stellar signals and searched for signatures of H2O, CO, CH4, H2S, NH3, and CO2 using the cross-correlation technique. We obtained non-detections for the first five molecules and used injection recovery tests to derive upper limits on the atmosphere. For CO$_2$ we measure a CCF signal at S/N ~ 3.6, with a detailed investigation showing no obvious indication that it is caused by correlated noise. A Welch t-test confirmed the in-trail and out-of-trail distributions to be different at $3.4 \sigma$ confidence. A Bayesian retrieval framework with free chemistry, resulted in volume mixing ratios corresponding to a metallicity of $[\mathrm{M/H}]=0.48^{+0.89}_{-1.70}$, an opacity deck pressure of $\log_{10}(P_\mathrm{c}) = -3.04^{+2.52}_{-1.53}$ and a planet temperature of $T_\mathrm{iso}=398^{+283}_{-197}$ K, consistent with a value intermediate between the day- and night-side T-p's derived from JWST data. While these values correspond to relatively large signal amplitudes predicted for CO2 features in the mid-infrared, they are compatible with JWST NIRSpec observations within the models' $1.5\sigma$ uncertainties. Further modelling and additional data are required to confirm the atmospheric signatures and obtain a comprehensive interpretation of low- and high-resolution data. Overall, our results support previous findings that CO2 is likely to be a significant component of the atmosphere of GJ 1214 b.