Quantifying the Key Factors Affecting the Escape of Planetary Atmospheres

Abstract

The habitability of Earth-like planets is an increasingly important subject in astrophysics and in planetary sciences. Atmospheric escape plays a vital role in the evolution of the habitability of Earth-like planets. By systematically analyzing the numerical simulation results of the interactions between the planetary atmospheres and the stellar winds, in this work, we evaluate various factors related to the atmospheric nonthermal ion escape rates, including planetary parameters (e.g., mass, density, radius, semimajor axis, etc.) and stellar wind parameters (e.g., density, velocity, and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength). Furthermore, we determine and quantify the key factors affecting the planetary atmospheric nonthermal ion escape rates. Our results show that the correlation coefficients between planetary atmospheric nonthermal ion escape rates and stellar wind density, IMF strength, and the ratio of the planetary radius to the planetary semimajor axis are 0.98 (0.88), 0.95 (0.81), and 0.87 (0.59), respectively, in the scenario of maximum (minimum) dynamic wind pressure. This means that the planetary atmospheric nonthermal ion escape rates increase with the increasing stellar wind density, the increasing IMF strength, and the increasing ratio of the planetary radius to the planetary semimajor axis. Generally, the nonthermal ion escape rates of planetary atmospheres are more sensitive to stellar wind parameters than to others. In addition, we determine the functional relations of the above three significant parameters for evaluating and quantifying the effects of such key physical factors on the nonthermal ion escape rates of the planetary atmospheres. Our findings will be very useful for better understanding the key factors that influence the escapes of planetary atmospheres.

Keywords

• Stellar winds
• Star-planet interactions
• Solar system planets
• Habitable planets
• Exoplanet atmospheres
• Astrobiology