Atmospheric Escape from Hot Jupiters

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0403369

From: Alain Lecavelier des Etangs [view email]

Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:01:00 GMT   (41kb)

Authors:
A. Lecavelier des Etangs (1),
A. Vidal-Madjar (1),
J. C. McConnell (2),
G. Hebrard (1) ((1) Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, Paris, France), ((2) Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada)

Comments: A&A Letters, in press

The extra-solar planet HD209458b has been found to have an extended
atmosphere of escaping atomic hydrogen (Vidal-Madjar et al. 2003), suggesting
that “hot Jupiters” closer to their parent stars could evaporate. Here we
estimate the atmospheric escape (so called evaporation rate) from hot Jupiters
and their corresponding life time against evaporation. The calculated
evaporation rate of HD209458b is in excellent agreement with the HI Lyman-alpha
observations. We find that the tidal forces and high temperatures in the upper
atmosphere must be taken into account to obtain reliable estimate of the
atmospheric escape. Because of the tidal forces, we show that there is a new
escape mechanism at intermediate temperatures at which the exobase reaches the
Roche lobe. From an energy balance, we can estimate plausible values for the
planetary exospheric temperatures, and thus obtain typical life times of
planets as a function of their mass and orbital distance.

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