A Climate-Constrained Bayesian Inverse Method for JWST Rocky Exoplanet Eclipse Spectra: A Case Study of LTT 1445A b

TL;DR

This paper introduces a climate-constrained Bayesian inference method for analyzing JWST eclipse spectra of rocky exoplanets, providing robust atmospheric constraints and demonstrating its application on LTT 1445A b.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Bayesian framework that uses self-consistent climate models to improve atmospheric retrievals from exoplanet eclipse data.

Findings

A bare rock model explains the current data without requiring an atmosphere.

Upper limits on surface partial pressures are established for various gases.

Future observations could detect thicker atmospheres if achieved with high precision.

Abstract

Determining whether temperate rocky exoplanets orbiting M stars retain atmospheres is currently a central goal of exoplanet astronomy. To this end, the James Webb Space Telescope has begun searching for atmospheres on these worlds with MIRI secondary eclipse spectroscopy and photometry. Here, we develop a novel climate-constrained Bayesian inference framework that yields atmospheric pressure and composition constraints from these datasets, while accounting for planetary, stellar, and model uncertainties. Our approach fits observations with model spectra derived from self-consistent pressure-temperature profiles at radiative-convective equilibrium, thus maximizing the information extracted from the data and providing more robust inferences than retrievals that use parameterized pressure-temperature profiles. We demonstrate the framework on the existing MIRI LRS eclipse spectrum of LTT 1445A b (1.34 $R_\oplus$ and $T_{\mathrm{eq}} \approx 431$ K). An atmosphere does not need to be invoked to explain the data, meaning a bare rock model produces an adequate fit. If the planet has an atmosphere, the $2\sigma$ upper limits on surface partial pressures are $\lesssim 1$ bar for an optically thin gas like O$_2$, N$_2$ or CO, $\lesssim0.1$ bar for CO$_2$, $\lesssim 10^{-3}$ bar for H$_2$O, and $\lesssim 10^{-4}$ bar for SO$_2$. Scheduled MIRI F1500W observations could detect one of the thicker atmospheres permitted by the existing data (1 bar O$_2$ and 0.01 bar CO$_2$), if a precision of 20 ppm or better is achieved. This case study demonstrates that climate-constrained Bayesian inversion can turn rocky-planet eclipse spectra into the quantitative constraints necessary to test population-level atmospheric retention hypothesis, like the cosmic shoreline.