Dust formation in the outflows of catastrophically evaporating planets
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Booth, Richard A
Owen, James E
Schulik, Matthäus
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Ultra-short period planets offer a window into the poorly understood interior composition of exoplanets through material evaporated from their rocky interiors. Among these objects are a class of disintegrating planets, observed when their dusty tails transit in front of their host stars. These dusty tails are thought to originate from dust condensation in thermally-driven winds emanating from the sublimating surfaces of these planets. Existing models of these winds have been unable to explain their highly variable nature and have not explicitly modelled how dust forms in the wind. Here we present new radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the winds from these planets, including a minimal model for the formation and destruction of dust, assuming that nucleation can readily take place. We find that dust forms readily in the winds, a consequence of large dust grains obtaining lower temperatures than the planet’s surface. As hypothesised previously, we find that the coupling of the planet’s surface temperature to the outflow properties via the dust’s opacity can drive time-variable flows when dust condensation is sufficiently fast. In agreement with previous work, our models suggest that these dusty tails are a signature of catastrophically evaporating planets that are close to the end of their lives. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for the dust’s composition. More detailed hydrodynamic models that self-consistently compute the nucleation and composition of the dust and gas are warranted in order to use these models to study the planet’s interior composition.
Date Issued
2023-01-01
Date Acceptance
2022-10-26
Citation
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2023, 518 (2), pp.1761-1775
ISSN
0035-8711
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Start Page
1761
End Page
1775
Journal / Book Title
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume
518
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s).
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stac3121/6783165
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-10-31