Numerical Performance of Correlated-k Distribution Method in Atmospheric Escape Simulation

Abstract

Atmospheric escape is crucial to understanding the evolution of planets in and out of the solar system and to interpreting atmospheric observations. While hydrodynamic escape simulations have been actively developed incorporating detailed processes such as UV heating, chemical reactions, and radiative cooling, the radiative cooling by molecules has been treated as emission from selected lines or rotational/vibrational bands to reduce its numerical cost. However, ad hoc selections of radiative lines would risk estimating inaccurate cooling rates because important lines or wavelengths for atmospheric cooling depend on emitting conditions such as temperature and optical thickness. In this study, we apply the correlated-k distribution (CKD) method to cooling rate calculations for H _2 -dominant transonic atmospheres containing H _2 O or CO as radiative species, to investigate its numerical performance and the importance of considering all lines of the molecules. Our simulations demonstrate that the sum of weak lines, which provides only 1% of the line emission energy in total at optically thin conditions, can become the primary source of radiative cooling in optically thick regions, especially for H _2 O-containing atmospheres. Also, in our hydrodynamic simulations, the CKD method with a wavelength resolution of 1000 is found to be effective, allowing the calculation of escape rate and temperature profiles with acceptable numerical cost. Our results show the importance of treating all radiative lines and the usefulness of the CKD method in hydrodynamic escape simulations. It is particularly practical for heavy-element-enriched atmospheres considered in small exoplanets, including super-Earths, without any prior selections for effective lines.

Keywords

• Exoplanet atmospheric evolution
• Exoplanet atmospheres
• Upper atmosphere