Water- and metal-rich atmospheres on compact hot mini-Neptunes lose mass more slowly than H/He cases at high enrichment levels due to enhanced cooling and higher mean molecular weight.
Core-powered mass loss and the radius distribution of small exoplanets
6 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
6
Pith papers citing it
abstract
Recent observations identify a valley in the radius distribution of small exoplanets, with planets in the range $1.5-2.0\,{\rm R}_{\oplus}$ significantly less common than somewhat smaller or larger planets. This valley may suggest a bimodal population of rocky planets that are either engulfed by massive gas envelopes that significantly enlarge their radius, or do not have detectable atmospheres at all. One explanation of such a bimodal distribution is atmospheric erosion by high-energy stellar photons. We investigate an alternative mechanism: the luminosity of the cooling rocky core, which can completely erode light envelopes while preserving heavy ones, produces a deficit of intermediate sized planets. We evolve planetary populations that are derived from observations using a simple analytical prescription, accounting self-consistently for envelope accretion, cooling and mass loss, and demonstrate that core-powered mass loss naturally reproduces the observed radius distribution, regardless of the high-energy incident flux. Observations of planets around different stellar types may distinguish between photoevaporation, which is powered by the high-energy tail of the stellar radiation, and core-powered mass loss, which depends on the bolometric flux through the planet's equilibrium temperature that sets both its cooling and mass-loss rates.
years
2026 6representative citing papers
JWST/NIRCam observations of 2024 YR4 extend the orbital arc by eight months, reduce 2032 lunar encounter uncertainty by >30x, and rule out impact with a 22,900 ± 800 km miss distance.
Two extremely low-density Jupiter-sized planets on long-period orbits around TOI-791 were confirmed via ground-based photometry and TTV-derived masses.
Generates and publicly releases 81,498 detrended Kepler light curves plus a catalog of 87 periodic variables (26 new) in the 2.5 Gyr cluster NGC 6819 using Gaia DR3 for membership.
J0404+1112 is a 2.93 hr period totally eclipsing WD+BD system with a hot DA white dwarf (T_eff ~28,000 K) and ~40 M_Jup brown dwarf, enabling isolation of nightside emission and serving as a JWST atmospheric benchmark.
Mass of 13.7 Earth masses and density 0.4 g cm^{-3} measured for TOI-1883 b, a super-Neptune in the ridge regime around an early-M dwarf, with implications for disk migration and photoevaporation.
citing papers explorer
-
JWST Observations of Asteroid 2024 YR4 Rule Out a 2032 Lunar Impact and Demonstrate a New Regime for Planetary Defense Follow-up
JWST/NIRCam observations of 2024 YR4 extend the orbital arc by eight months, reduce 2032 lunar encounter uncertainty by >30x, and rule out impact with a 22,900 ± 800 km miss distance.