arXiv subjects

A. Johansen

Publications and source records attributed to A. Johansen.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Magnetohydrodynamic simulation assessment of a potential near-ultraviolet early ingress in WASP-189b

Ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs) in close orbits around early-type stars provide natural laboratories for studying atmospheric escape and star-planet interactions under extreme irradiation and wind conditions. The near-ultraviolet (NUV) regime is particularly sensitive to extended upper atmospheric and magnetospheric structures. We investigate whether star-planet interactions in the WASP-189 system could plausibly account for the early ingress feature suggested by NUV transit fitting models. We analyzed three NUV transits of WASP-189b observed as part of the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE), which employs a 6U CubeSat dedicated to exoplanet spectroscopy. To explore whether the observed transit asymmetry could plausibly arise from a magnetospheric bow shock (MBS), we performed magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations using representative stellar wind velocities and planetary atmospheric densities. During Visit 3, we identified an approximately 31.5-minute phase offset that is consistent with an early ingress. Our MHD simulations indicate that with a wind speed of 573 km s-1 and an upper atmospheric density of about 4.6e-11 kg m-3, a higher-density zone due to compression can form ahead of the planet within five planetary radii where the fast-mode Mach number falls below ~0.56, even without a MBS. Shock cooling and crossing time estimates suggest that such a pileup could produce detectable NUV absorption. Our results indicate that while MBS formation is feasible for WASP-189b, low stellar-wind speeds favor NUV-detectable magnetic pileups over classical bow shocks and enhance the potential detectability of early-ingress signatures.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Hydro-, Magnetohydro-, and Dust-Gas Dynamics of Protoplanetary Disks

The building of planetary systems is controlled by the gas and dust dynamics of protoplanetary disks. While the gas is simultaneously accreted onto the central star and dissipated away by winds, dust grains aggregate and collapse to form planetesimals and eventually planets. This dust and gas dynamics involves instabilities, turbulence and complex non-linear interactions which ultimately control the observational appearance and the secular evolution of these disks. This chapter is dedicated to the most recent developments in our understanding of the dynamics of gaseous and dusty disks, covering hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, gas-dust instabilities, dust clumping and disk winds. We show how these physical processes have been tested from observations and highlight standing questions that should be addressed in the future.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2021

The fate of planetesimals formed at planetary gap edges

The presence of rings and gaps in protoplanetary discs are often ascribed to planet-disc interactions, where dust and pebbles are trapped at the edges of planetary induced gas gaps. Recent work has shown that these are likely sites for planetesimal formation via the streaming instability. Given the large amount of planetesimals that potentially form at gap edges, we address the question of their fate and ability to radially transport solids in protoplanetary discs. We perform a series of N-body simulations of planetesimal orbits, taking into account the effect of gas drag and mass loss via ablation. We consider two planetary systems: one akin to the young Solar System, and another one inspired by HL Tau. In both systems, the close proximity to the gap-opening planets results in large orbital excitations, causing the planetesimals to leave their birth locations and spread out across the disc soon after formation. Planetesimals that end up on eccentric orbits interior of 10au experience efficient ablation, and lose all mass before they reach the innermost disc region. In our nominal Solar System simulation with $\dot{M}_0=10^{-7}\, M_{\odot}\, \textrm{yr}^{-1}$ and $α=10^{-2}$, we find that 70% of the initial planetesimal mass has been ablated after 500kyr. The ablation rate in HL Tau is lower, and only 11% of the initial planetesimal mass has been ablated after 1Myr. The ablated material consist of a mixture of solid grains and vaporized ices, where a large fraction of the vaporized ices re-condense to form solid ice. Assuming that the solids grow to pebbles in the disc midplane, this results in a pebble flux of $\sim 10-100\,M_{\oplus}\textrm{Myr}^{-1}$ through the inner disc. Our results demonstrate that scattered planetesimals can carry a significant flux of solids past planetary-induced gaps in young and massive protoplanetary discs.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2021

Formation of Venus, Earth and Mars: Constrained by isotopes

We discuss the current state of knowledge of terrestrial planet formation from the aspects of different planet formation models and isotopic data from 182Hf-182W, U-Pb, lithophile-siderophile elements, 48Ca/44Ca isotope samples from planetary building blocks, 36Ar/38Ar, 20Ne/22Ne, 36Ar/22Ne isotope ratios in Venus' and Earth's atmospheres, the expected solar 3He abundance in Earth's deep mantle and Earth's D/H sea water ratios that shed light on the accretion time of the early protoplanets. Accretion scenarios that can explain the different isotope ratios, including a Moon-forming event after ca. 50 Myr, support the theory that the bulk of Earth's mass (>80%) most likely accreted within 10-30 Myr. From a combined analysis of the before mentioned isotopes, one finds that proto-Earth accreted 0.5-0.6 MEarth within the first ~4-5 Myr, the approximate lifetime of the protoplanetary disk. For Venus, the available atmospheric noble gas data are too uncertain for constraining the planet's accretion scenario accurately. However, from the available Ar and Ne isotope measurements, one finds that proto-Venus could have grown to 0.85-1.0 MVenus before the disk dissipated. Classical terrestrial planet formation models have struggled to grow large planetary embryos quickly from the tiniest materials within the typical lifetime of protoplanetary disks. Pebble accretion could solve this long-standing time scale controversy. Pebble accretion and streaming instabilities produce large planetesimals that grow into Mars-sized and larger planetary embryos during this early accretion phase. The later stage of accretion can be explained well with the Grand-Tack, annulus or depleted disk models. The relative roles of pebble accretion and planetesimal accretion/giant impacts are poorly understood and should be investigated with N-body simulations that include pebbles and multiple protoplanets.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2020

The Pencil Code, a modular MPI code for partial differential equations and particles: multipurpose and multiuser-maintained

The Pencil Code is a highly modular physics-oriented simulation code that can be adapted to a wide range of applications. It is primarily designed to solve partial differential equations (PDEs) of compressible hydrodynamics and has lots of add-ons ranging from astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) to meteorological cloud microphysics and engineering applications in combustion. Nevertheless, the framework is general and can also be applied to situations not related to hydrodynamics or even PDEs, for example when just the message passing interface or input/output strategies of the code are to be used. The code can also evolve Lagrangian (inertial and noninertial) particles, their coagulation and condensation, as well as their interaction with the fluid.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

A giant exoplanet orbiting a very low-mass star challenges planet formation models

Statistical analyses from exoplanet surveys around low-mass stars indicate that super-Earth and Neptune-mass planets are more frequent than gas giants around such stars, in agreement with core accretion theory of planet formation. Using precise radial velocities derived from visual and near-infrared spectra, we report the discovery of a giant planet with a minimum mass of 0.46 Jupiter masses in an eccentric 204-day orbit around the very low-mass star GJ 3512. Dynamical models show that the high eccentricity of the orbit is most likely explained from planet-planet interactions. The reported planetary system challenges current formation theories and puts stringent constraints on the accretion and migration rates of planet formation and evolution models, indicating that disc instability may be more efficient in forming planets than previously thought.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2019

VLA cm-wave survey of young stellar objects in the Oph A cluster: constraining extreme UV- and X-ray-driven disk photo-evaporation -- A pathfinder for Square Kilometre Array studies

Observations of young stellar objects (YSOs) in centimeter bands can probe the continuum emission from growing dust grains, ionized winds, and magnetospheric activity, which are intimately connected to the evolution of protoplanetary disks and the formation of planets. We have carried out sensitive continuum observations toward the Ophiuchus A star-forming region using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at 10 GHz over a field-of-view of 6$'$ with a spatial resolution of $θ_{maj}$ $\times$ $θ_{min}$ $\sim$ 0.4$''$ $\times$ 0.2$''$. We achieved a 5 $μ$Jy beam$^{-1}$ root-mean-square noise level at the center of our mosaic field of view. Among the eighteen sources we detected, sixteen are YSOs (three Class 0, five Class I, six Class II, and two Class III) and two are extragalactic candidates. We find that thermal dust emission generally contributes less that 30% of the emission at 10 GHz. The radio emission is dominated by other types of emission such as gyro-synchrotron radiation from active magnetospheres, free-free emission from thermal jets, free-free emission from the outflowing photo-evaporated disk material, and/or synchrotron emission from accelerated cosmic-rays in jet or protostellar surface shocks. These different types of emission could not be clearly disentangled. Our non-detections towards Class II/III disks suggest that extreme UV-driven photoevaporation is insufficient to explain the disk dispersal, assuming that the contribution of UV photoevaporating stellar winds to radio flux does not evolve with time. The sensitivity of our data cannot exclude photoevaporation due to X-ray photons as an efficient mechanism for disk dispersal. Deeper surveys with the Square Kilometre Array will be able to provide strong constraints on disk photoevaporation.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2016

Terrestrial planets across space and time

The study of cosmology, galaxy formation and exoplanets has now advanced to a stage where a cosmic inventory of terrestrial planets may be attempted. By coupling semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to a recipe that relates the occurrence of planets to the mass and metallicity of their host stars, we trace the population of terrestrial planets around both solar-mass (FGK type) and lower-mass (M dwarf) stars throughout all of cosmic history. We find that the mean age of terrestrial planets in the local Universe is $7\pm{}1$ Gyr for FGK hosts and $8\pm{}1$ Gyr for M dwarfs. We estimate that hot Jupiters have depleted the population of terrestrial planets around FGK stars by no more than $\approx 10\%$, and that only $\approx 10\%$ of the terrestrial planets at the current epoch are orbiting stars in a metallicity range for which such planets have yet to be confirmed. The typical terrestrial planet in the local Universe is located in a spheroid-dominated galaxy with a total stellar mass comparable to that of the Milky Way. When looking at the inventory of planets throughout the whole observable Universe, we argue for a total of $\approx 1\times 10^{19}$ and $\approx 5\times 10^{20}$ terrestrial planets around FGK and M stars, respectively. Due to light travel time effects, the terrestrial planets on our past light cone exhibit a mean age of just $1.7\pm 0.2$ Gyr. These results are discussed in the context of cosmic habitability, the Copernican principle and searches for extraterrestrial intelligence at cosmological distances.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

The role of pebble fragmentation in planetesimal formation I. Experimental study

Previous work on protoplanetary dust growth shows halt at centimeter sizes owing to the occurrence of bouncing at velocities of $\geq$ 0.1 $ms^{-1}$ and fragmentation at velocities $\geq$ 1 $ms^{-1}$. To overcome these barriers, spatial concentration of cm-sized dust pebbles and subsequent gravitational collapse have been proposed. However, numerical investigations have shown that dust aggregates may undergo fragmentation during the gravitational collapse phase. This fragmentation in turn changes the size distribution of the solids and thus must be taken into account in order to understand the properties of the planetesimals that form. To explore the fate of dust pebbles undergoing fragmenting collisions, we conducted laboratory experiments on dust-aggregate collisions with a focus on establishing a collision model for this stage of planetesimal formation. In our experiments, we analysed collisions of dust aggregates with masses between 1.4 g and 180 g, mass ratios between target and projectile from 125 to 1 at a fixed porosity of 65%, within the velocity range of 1.5 $-$ 8.7 $ms^{-1}$ , at low atmospheric pressure of $\sim 10^{-3}$ mbar and in free-fall conditions. We derived the mass of the largest fragment, the fragment size/mass distribution, and the efficiency of mass transfer as a function of collision velocity and projectile/target aggregate size. Moreover, we give recipes for an easy-to-use fragmentation and mass-transfer model for further use in modeling work. In a companion paper, we utilize the experimental findings and the derived dust-aggregate collision model to investigate the fate of dust pebbles during gravitational collapse.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

Dust Evolution and the Formation of Planetesimals

The solid content of circumstellar disks is inherited from the interstellar medium: dust particles of at most a micrometer in size. Protoplanetary disks are the environment where these dust grains need to grow at least 13 orders of magnitude in size. Our understanding of this growth process is far from complete, with different physics seemingly posing obstacles to this growth at various stages. Yet, the ubiquity of planets in our galaxy suggests that planet formation is a robust mechanism. This chapter focuses on the earliest stages of planet formation, the growth of small dust grains towards the gravitationally bound "planetesimals", the building blocks of planets. We will introduce some of the key physics involved in the growth processes and discuss how they are expected to shape the global behavior of the solid content of disks. We will consider possible pathways towards the formation of larger bodies and conclude by reviewing some of the recent observational advances in the field.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2015

Fossilized condensation lines in the Solar System protoplanetary disk

The terrestrial planets and the asteroids dominant in the inner asteroid belt are water poor. However, in the protoplanetary disk the temperature should have decreased below water condensation level well before the disk was photoevaporated. Thus, the global water depletion of the inner Solar System is puzling. We show that, even if the inner disk becomes cold, there cannot be direct condensation of water. This is because the snowline moves towards the Sun more slowly than the gas itself. The appearance of ice in a range of heliocentric distances swept by the snowline can only be due to the radial drift of icy particles from the outer disk. However, if a sufficiently massive planet is present, the radial drift of particles is interrupted, because the disk acquires a superKeplerian rotation just outside of the planetary orbit. From this result, we propose that the precursor of Jupiter achieved about 20 Earth masses when the snowline was still around 3 AU. This effectively fossilized the snowline at that location. Although cooling, the disk inside of the Jovian orbit remained ice-depleted because the flow of icy particles from the outer system was intercepted by the planet. This scenario predicts that planetary systems without giant planets should be much more rich in water in their inner regions than our system. We also show that the inner edge of the planetesimal disk at 0.7AU, required in terrestrial planet formation models to explain the small mass of Mercury and the absence of planets inside of its orbit, could be due to the silicate condensation line, fossilized at the end of the phase of streaming instability that generated the planetesimal seeds. Thus, when the disk cooled, silicate particles started to drift inwards of 0.7AU without being sublimated, but they could not be accreted by any pre-existing planetesimals.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2015

The formation of the solar system

The solar system started to form about 4.56 Gyr ago and despite the long intervening time span, there still exist several clues about its formation. The three major sources for this information are meteorites, the present solar system structure and the planet-forming systems around young stars. In this introduction we give an overview of the current understanding of the solar system formation from all these different research fields. This includes the question of the lifetime of the solar protoplanetary disc, the different stages of planet formation, their duration, and their relative importance. We consider whether meteorite evidence and observations of protoplanetary discs point in the same direction. This will tell us whether our solar system had a typical formation history or an exceptional one. There are also many indications that the solar system formed as part of a star cluster. Here we examine the types of cluster the Sun could have formed in, especially whether its stellar density was at any stage high enough to influence the properties of today's solar system. The likelihood of identifying siblings of the Sun is discussed. Finally, the possible dynamical evolution of the solar system since its formation and its future are considered.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2014

The PLATO 2.0 Mission

PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA's M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary systems form and evolve? Are there other systems with planets like ours, including potentially habitable planets? The PLATO 2.0 instrument consists of 34 small aperture telescopes (32 with 25 sec readout cadence and 2 with 2.5 sec candence) providing a wide field-of-view (2232 deg2) and a large photometric magnitude range (4-16 mag). It focusses on bright (4-11 mag) stars in wide fields to detect and characterize planets down to Earth-size by photometric transits, whose masses can then be determined by ground-based radial-velocity follow-up measurements. Asteroseismology will be performed for these bright stars to obtain highly accurate stellar parameters, including masses and ages. The combination of bright targets and asteroseismology results in high accuracy for the bulk planet parameters: 2%, 4-10% and 10% for planet radii, masses and ages, respectively. The planned baseline observing strategy includes two long pointings (2-3 years) to detect and bulk characterize planets reaching into the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars and an additional step-and-stare phase to cover in total about 50% of the sky. PLATO 2.0 will observe up to 1,000,000 stars and detect and characterize hundreds of small planets, and thousands of planets in the Neptune to gas giant regime out to the HZ. It will therefore provide the first large-scale catalogue of bulk characterized planets with accurate radii, masses, mean densities and ages. This catalogue will include terrestrial planets at intermediate orbital distances, where surface temperatures are moderate. Coverage of this parameter range with statistical numbers of bulk characterized planets is unique to PLATO 2.0.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2014

Giant planet and brown dwarf formation

Understanding the dominant brown dwarf and giant planet formation processes, and finding out whether these processes rely on completely different mechanisms or share common channels represents one of the major challenges of astronomy and remains the subject of heated debates. It is the aim of this review to summarize the latest developments in this field and to address the issue of origin by confronting different brown dwarf and giant planet formation scenarios to presently available observational constraints. As examined in the review, if objects are classified as "Brown Dwarfs" or "Giant Planets" on the basis of their formation mechanism, it has now become clear that their mass domains overlap and that there is no mass limit between these two distinct populations. Furthermore, while there is increasing observational evidence for the existence of non-deuterium burning brown dwarfs, some giant planets, characterized by a significantly metal enriched composition, might be massive enough to ignite deuterium burning in their core. Deuterium burning (or lack of) thus plays no role in either brown dwarf or giant planet formation. Consequently, we argue that the IAU definition to distinguish these two populations has no physical justification and brings scientific confusion. In contrast, brown dwarfs and giant planets might bear some imprints of their formation mechanism, notably in their mean density and in the physical properties of their atmosphere. Future direct imaging surveys will undoubtedly provide crucial information and perhaps provide some clear observational diagnostics to unambiguously distinguish these different astrophysical objects.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2011

Keynesian Economics After All

It is demonstrated that the US economy has on the long-term in reality been governed by the Keynesian approach to economics independent of the current official economical policy. This is done by calculating the two-point correlation function between the fluctuations of the DJIA and the US public debt. We find that the origin of this condition is mainly related to the wars that the USA has fought during the time period investigated. Wars mean a large influx of public money into the economy, thus as a consequence creating a significant economical upturn in the DJIA. A reason for this straight-cut result of our analysis, is that very few wars have been fought on US-territory and those that have, were in the 18th century, when the partial destruction of cities, factories, railways and so on, was more limited and with less effect on the over-all economy.

q-fin.GN↗

arXiv2009

Planet formation bursts at the borders of the dead zone in 2D numerical simulations of circumstellar disks

As accretion in protoplanetary disks is enabled by turbulent viscosity, the border between active and inactive (dead) zones constitutes a location where there is an abrupt change in the accretion flow. The gas accumulation that ensues triggers the Rossby wave instability, that in turn saturates into anticyclonic vortices. It was suggested that the trapping of solids within them leads to a burst of planet formation on very short timescales. We perform two-dimensional global simulations of the dynamics of gas and solids in a non-magnetized thin protoplanetary disk with the Pencil Code. We use multiple particle species of radius 1, 10, 30, and 100 cm, solving for the particles' gravitational interaction by a particle-mesh method. The dead zone is modeled as a region of low viscosity. Adiabatic and locally isothermal equations of state are used. We find that the Rossby wave instability is triggered under a variety of conditions, thus making vortex formation a robust process. Inside the vortices, fast accumulation of solids occurs and the particles collapse into objects of planetary mass in timescales as short as five orbits. Because the drag force is size-dependent, aerodynamical sorting ensues within the vortical motion, and the first bound structures formed are composed primarily of similarly-sized particles. In addition to erosion due to ram pressure, we identify gas tides from the massive vortices as a disrupting agent of formed protoplanetary embryos. We also estimate the collisional velocity history of the particles that compose the most massive embryo by the end of the simulation, finding that the vast majority of them never experienced a collision with another particle at speeds faster than 1 m/s.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2008

Standing on the shoulders of giants: Trojan Earths and vortex trapping in low mass self-gravitating protoplanetary disks of gas and solids

Centimeter and meter sized solid particles in protoplanetary disks are trapped within long lived high pressure regions, creating opportunities for collapse into planetesimals and planetary embryos. We study the accumulations in the stable Lagrangian points of a giant planet, as well as in the Rossby vortices launched at the edges of the gap it carves. We employ the Pencil Code, tracing the solids with a large number of interacting Lagrangian particles, usually 100,000. For particles of 1 cm to 10 cm radii, gravitational collapse occurs in the Lagrangian points in less than 200 orbits. For 5 cm particles, a 2 Earth mass planet is formed. For 10 cm, the final maximum collapsed mass is around 3 Earth masses. The collapse of the 1 cm particles is indirect, following the timescale of depletion of gas from the tadpole orbits. In the edges of the gap vortices are excited, trapping preferentially particles of 30 cm radii. The rocky planet that is formed is as massive as 17 Earth masses, constituting a Super-Earth. By using multiple particle species, we find that gas drag modifies the streamlines in the tadpole region around the classical L4 and L5 points. As a result, particles of different radii have their stable points shifted to different locations. Collapse therefore takes longer and produces planets of lower mass. Three super-Earths are formed in the vortices, the most massive having 4.4 Earth masses. We conclude that a Jupiter mass planet can induce the formation of other planetary embryos in the outer edge of its gas gap. Trojan Earth mass planets are readily formed, and although not existing in the solar system, might be common in the exoplanetary zoo.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

Embryos grown in the dead zone: Assembling the first protoplanetary cores in low mass self-gravitating circumstellar disks of gas and solids

In the borders of the dead zones of protoplanetary disks, the inflow of gas produces a local density maximum that triggers the Rossby wave instability. The vortices that form are efficient in trapping solids. We aim to assess the possibility of gravitational collapse of the solids within the Rossby vortices. We perform global simulations of the dynamics of gas and solids in a low mass non-magnetized self-gravitating thin protoplanetary disk with the Pencil code. We use multiple particle species of radius 1, 10, 30, and 100 cm. The dead zone is modeled as a region of low viscosity. The Rossby vortices excited in the edges of the dead zone are very efficient particle traps. Within 5 orbits after their appearance, the solids achieve critical density and undergo gravitational collapse into Mars sized objects. The velocity dispersions are of the order of 10 m/s for newly formed embryos, later lowering to less than 1 m/s by drag force cooling. After 200 orbits, 38 gravitationally bound embryos were formed inside the vortices, half of them being more massive than Mars. The embryos are composed primarily of same-sized particles. We conclude that the presence of a dead zone naturally gives rise to a population of protoplanetary cores in the mass range of 0.1-0.6 Earth masses, on very short timescales.

astro-ph↗