The Impact of Stellar Flares on the Atmospheric Escape of Exoplanets Orbiting M Stars. I. Insights from the AU Mic System

Abstract

The X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (XUV) emission from M stars can drive the atmospheric escape on planets orbiting them. M stars are also known for their frequent emission of stellar flares, which will increase the high-energy flux received by their orbiting planets. To understand how stellar flares impact the primordial atmospheres of planets orbiting young M stars, we use UV spectroscopic data of flares from the Habitable Zones and M dwarf Activity across Time and Measurements of the Ultraviolet Spectral Characteristics of Low-mass Exoplanetary Systems programs as a proxy for the XUV flare emission. Using the software package VPLanet , we simulate the young AU Mic planetary system composed of two Neptune-sized and one Earth-sized planet orbiting a 23 Myr old M1 star. Our findings show that the Earth-sized planet AU Mic d should be in the process of completely losing its atmosphere in the next couple million years, solely due to the quiescent emission, with flares not significantly contributing to its atmospheric escape, due to the small size of AU mic d and its close-in distance from the star. However, our results indicate that flares would play a crucial role for such planets farther away, in the habitable zone (i.e., 0.2935 au) of AU Mic-like stars during the post-saturation phase, accelerating the total atmospheric loss process by a few billion years. For planets between 0.365 au and the HZ outer edge, the additional XUV from flares is necessary to fully deplete primordial atmospheres, since the quiescent emission alone is insufficient.

Keywords

• Stellar flares
• Exoplanet atmospheric evolution
• Star-planet interactions
• Exoplanet atmospheres
• M stars
• M dwarf stars