Alternative Energy Sources for Stratospheric Heating in the Atmospheres of Hot Jupiters

Details Alternative Energy Sources for Stratospheric Heating in the Atmospheres of Hot Jupiters Alternative Energy Sources for Stratospheric Heating in the Atmospheres of Hot Jupiters

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21430602m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #306.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.728

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Scientific paper

Spitzer Space Telescope observations of the transiting hot Jupiter exoplanets have revealed that some possess hot stratospheres, well in excess of the planetary equilibrium temperatures. Stratospheres are a commonplace attribute of solar system planetary atmospheres and are often heated by absorption of incident UV flux by photochemically produced species. Hubeny et al. (2003) and Fortney et al. (2008), however, suggested that strong optical absorption by equilibrium gaseous atmospheric TiO and VO could provide the necessary energy source for at least some hot Jupiters. Fortney et al. in fact suggested that hot Jupiters might be spectroscopically classified on the basis of the presence or absence of these species into pM and pL spectral classes, analogously to ultracool dwarfs. However there are difficulties with this mechanism, most notably that TiO and VO may condense out into a refractory cloud layer relatively deeply in the atmosphere of even very hot giant planets. Guided by the prediction of Zahnle et al. (2009) that sulfur photochemistry will produce copious S2 in hot Jupiter atmospheres, we explore the heating potential of this and other photochemical species. We find that sulfur products, in at least some cases, may provide an important component of the stratospheric energy budget. This prediction may be tested by UV transit spectroscopy.

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