arXiv subjects

Mara Attia

Publications and source records attributed to Mara Attia.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Evolutionary pathways toward survival of a thick CO2- or SO2-rich atmosphere on the lava world TOI-561 b

Rocky planets evolve through the exchange of volatiles between their interiors and atmospheres, an interplay still poorly constrained by observations. Remarkably, highly irradiated ultrashort-period (USP) exoplanets may offer a window into this exchange -- some retain low bulk densities compatible with volatile-rich envelopes surrounding rocky interiors, indicating possible secondary atmospheres. TOI-561 b is a prime example, with a bulk density of $4.3\pm0.4$ g cm$^{-3}$ and recent JWST observations favoring a thick volatile atmosphere overlying a dayside magma ocean. Here, we investigate the evolutionary pathways allowing TOI-561 b to retain a substantial atmosphere over gigayears using the PROTEUS coupled interior--atmosphere framework. We explore different core radius fractions, Bond albedos, atmospheric escape efficiencies, mantle redox states, and initial C--H--O--N--S volatile inventories, under in situ evolution and late inward migration. Over half of our simulations leave a bare interior too dense to match observations. Successful cases favor a volatile-rich origin ($\lesssim200$ Earth oceans of hydrogen, S/H $\le10$, and N/H $\le1$), an oxidized mantle ($f$O$_2 \gtrsim \mathrm{IW}+4$), a small iron core ($\le 0.40$ for the core radius fraction), and low escape efficiency ($\epsilon \lesssim 10^{-3}$) in the hydrodynamic escape regime. At present, TOI-561 b is consistent with a global magma ocean beneath a thick (surface pressure $\approx 10^{3}$--$10^{4}$ bar), high mean molecular weight atmosphere ($38$--$60$ g mol$^{-1}$). Two archetypes emerge, differentiated by bulk sulfur content: a CO$_2$-dominated and an SO$_2$-dominated atmosphere. Migration is viable but not required to reproduce the observations. Our study illustrates how interior--atmosphere coupling governs atmospheric retention on irradiated rocky planets.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2026

Atmospheric escape fractionates secondary but not primary atmospheres

A planet's atmosphere, heated by starlight, can flow off as a wind, taking some gases and leaving others in unknown proportions. Yet this selection wrote the noble-gas records of the terrestrial planets, and decides which gases hot exoplanets keep. We solve this fractionated escape problem for arbitrary composition: a wind sorts gases only for secondary, hydrogen-poor atmospheres, and removes primary, hydrogen-rich atmospheres wholesale. The algebraic solution recovers every published formula as special cases. It provides a unified interpretation of atmospheric evolution across the Solar System and exoplanets. Fractionating argon on Mars stripped carbon while sparing krypton, Venus' retained argon constrains the wind intensity that removed its water, Earth's xenon record excludes a neutral wind. The same solution ranks the rocky exoplanets under JWST observation by the gases they can keep.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2026

Reflation: redox-driven atmospheric inflation as tracer of super-Earth geochemistry

We demonstrate that the redox-sensitivity of mantle outgassing can trigger transient episodes of atmospheric re-inflation in highly irradiated and geochemically-reduced super-Earths, a mechanism we term reflation. Mantle redox governs the outgassing and speciation of CHONS volatiles, setting the background secondary atmospheric composition during extended photoevaporation at highly irradiated conditions. Using simulations of the coupled atmosphere-interior evolution of irradiated super-Earths, we illustrate that reduced mantles close to the iron-wustite buffer initially produce CO-dominated atmospheres. Hydrodynamic escape continuously removes volatiles while outgassing from the melt replenishes the atmosphere with H2, converted from H2O dissolved in the underlying magma ocean. This leads to a late-stage transition from C- to H-dominated gas that transiently re-inflates super-Earth atmospheres and decreases their bulk densities by up to $\sim$60$\%$ between several hundreds of Myr to Gyr after their formation, prior to complete atmospheric erosion by photoevaporation. In contrast, oxidised mantles, closer to Earth-like geochemistry, strongly buffer their atmospheric composition while exposed to hydrodynamic escape, producing monotonic radius deflation. Reflation events are triggered by geochemically-reduced mantles, intermediate escape efficiencies, high irradiation, and initial water inventories $\gtrsim$ 5 Earth oceans. This redox-dependent evolutionary divergence hinges on the sensitive feedback between interior and atmospheric evolution serving as a potential tracer of historical geochemical state. Population-level reflation signatures of close-in super-Earths may thus serve as tracers of interior geochemistry and formation conditions.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2026

The panchromatic JWST dayside spectrum of WASP-121 b reveals a refractory-rich formation

One path to understand how planets form is to link their present-day atmospheric composition to predictions from planet formation models. For the hottest planets, the abundances of refractory species can provide a useful formation tracer, complementing the traditionally used C/O and overall metallicity. Here we investigate the refractory abundance in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121 b, combining new JWST MIRI/LRS observations with archival NIRSpec/G395H and NIRISS/SOSS data to obtain a panchromatic dayside emission spectrum from 0.6 to 12 $\mu$m. Our retrieval analysis detects the refractory tracer SiO gas at high confidence, in addition to previously detected volatile species. The atmosphere is enriched in volatile and refractory species, with enhanced refractory-to-volatile ratios of Si/O=$3.54^{+0.86}_{-0.69}$x stellar and Si/C=$3.05^{+1.12}_{-0.80}$x stellar, relative to new stellar abundance constraints from ESPRESSO data. In addition, we confirm the depletion of TiO and the need for an additional source of reflected light opacity with a geometric albedo of $0.22\pm0.03$. The retrieved dayside temperature profile has a strong inversion layer, with a more complex structure than standard parameterizations can accommodate, and an eclipse map analysis indicates a small eastward hotspot offset of $4.8^{+2.7\circ}_{-2.8}$. Comparing our results with models of planet formation, we find that the measured enrichment pattern was shaped by accretion from multiple reservoirs, either through a mixture of solid and gas accretion interior to the water ice line or through continued solid accretion during inward migration from farther out in the disk. Finally, we model the planet's dynamical history and find that it could reach its current high-obliquity orbit as a consequence of a post-formation dynamical event, such as planet-planet scattering or von Zeipel-Lidov-Kozai cycles.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2026

PALEOS: Multiphase equations of state and mass-radius relations for exoplanet interiors

Modeling the interior of a rocky or water-rich exoplanet is a thermodynamic closure problem: every layer's density, temperature gradient, and phase must follow from an equation of state (EoS) that remains self-consistent across the pressure-temperature range from surface to core. Existing EoS span disciplines, use different formalisms, and rarely supply the full thermodynamic quantities needed by evolutionary models of interior phase transitions. We present PALEOS (Planetary Assemblage Layers: Equations of State), an open-source toolkit consolidating EoS for iron, magnesium silicate (MgSiO$_3$), and water (H$_2$O) into a unified, phase-aware, thermally responsive framework spanning 17 phases. PALEOS derives density, energy, entropy, heat capacities, thermal expansion, and the adiabatic gradient analytically via Maxwell relations, and is released as lookup tables on regular P-T grids. We validate it against the Preliminary Reference Earth Model, recovering Earth's radius to 0.3% and lower-mantle densities to 3%, and compute 17,900 mass-radius relations from 0.1 to 100 $M_\oplus$ for rocky (Fe + MgSiO$_3$) and water-rich (Earth-like core + H$_2$O envelope) compositions at 300-4000 K. Continuous solid-to-melt EoS let thermal expansion span the fully-solid to magma-ocean regime: the radius offset exceeds 1% above 1500 K and reaches 16% at 4000 K for low-mass silicate planets, comparable to composition degeneracy and transit-radius uncertainties. We demonstrate this on two ultrashort-period super-Earths, WASP-47 e and TOI-1807 b: each admits two purely rocky solutions indistinguishable in mass and radius but in radically different states, one fully solid with no dynamo, the other hosting a deep magma ocean and a liquid iron core capable of sustaining a magnetic field. Phase-aware, thermally resolved EoS are essential for translating astronomical observations into exoplanetary geophysics.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Hot Exoplanet Atmospheres Resolved with Transit Spectroscopy (HEARTS) VII. Detection of sodium on the long-transiting inflated sub-Saturn KELT-11 b

KELT-11b is an inflated sub-Saturn with a hot atmosphere and that orbits a bright evolved subgiant star, making it a prime choice for atmospheric characterization, but that transits its host star for more than seven hours. We observed this system in series of three consecutive nights with the HARPS spectrograph and report on the analysis of the transmission spectrum obtained from this dataset. Our results highlight the potential for independent observations of a long-transiting planet over consecutive nights. Our study reveals a sodium excess absorption of $0.28 \pm 0.05 %$ and $0.50 \pm 0.06 %$ in the Na D1 and D2 lines, respectively. This corresponds to 1.44 and 1.69 times the white-light planet radius in the line cores. Wind pattern modeling tends to prefer day-to-night side winds with no vertical winds, which is surprising considering the planet bloatedness. The modeling of the Rossiter-Mclaughlin effect yields a significantly misaligned orbit, with a projected spin-orbit angle of $λ = -77.86^{+2.36}_{-2.26}{}^\circ$. The characteristics of KELT-11 b, notably its extreme scale height and long transit, make it an ideal and unique target for next-generation telescopes. Our results as well as recent findings from HST, TESS, and CHEOPS observations could make KELT-11 b a benchmark exoplanet in atmospheric characterization.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2021

Cosmological Magnetogenesis: The Biermann Battery during the Epoch of Reionization

We investigate the effect of the Biermann battery during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) using cosmological Adaptive Mesh Refinement simulations within the framework of the SPHINX project. We develop a novel numerical technique to solve for the Biermann battery term in the Constrained Transport method, preserving both the zero divergence of the magnetic field and the absence of Biermann battery for isothermal flows. The structure-preserving nature of our numerical method turns out to be very important to minimise numerical errors during validation tests of the propagation of a Strömgren sphere and of a Sedov blast wave. We then use this new method to model the evolution of a 2.5 and 5 co-moving Mpc cosmological box with a state-of-the-art galaxy formation model within the RAMSES code. Contrary to previous findings, we show that three different Biermann battery channels emerge: the first one is associated with linear perturbations before the EoR, the second one is the classical Biermann battery associated with reionization fronts during the EoR, and the third one is associated with strong, supernova-driven outflows. While the two former channels generate spontaneously volume-filling magnetic fields with a strength on the order or below $10^{-20}$ G, the latter, owing to the higher plasma temperature and a marginally-resolved turbulent dynamo, reaches a field strength as high as $10^{-18}$ G in the intergalactic medium around massive haloes.

astro-ph.CO↗