arXiv subjects

Pierre Auclair-Desrotour

Publications and source records attributed to Pierre Auclair-Desrotour.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Repercussions of thermal atmospheric tides on the rotation of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone

Semidiurnal atmospheric thermal tides are important for terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone of their host stars. With solid tides, they torque these planets, thus contributing to determine their rotation states as well as their climate. Given the complex dynamics of thermal tides, analytical models are essential to understand its dependence on the structure and rotation of planetary atmospheres and the tidal frequency. In this context, the state of the art model proposed in the 60's by Lindzen and Chapman explains well the properties of thermal tides in the asymptotic regime of Earth-like rapid rotators but predicts a non-physical diverging tidal torque in the vicinity of the spin-orbit synchronization. In this work, we present a new model that addresses this issue by taking into account dissipative processes through a Newtonian cooling. First, we recover the tidal torque recently obtained with numerical simulations using General Circulation Models (GCM). Second, we show that the tidal response is very sensitive to the atmospheric structure, particularly to the stability with respect to convection. A strong stable stratification is able to annihilate the atmospheric tidal torque, leading to synchronization, while a convective atmosphere will be submitted to a strong torque, leading to a non-synchronized rotation state.

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arXiv2017

Atmospheric thermal tides and planetary spin I. The complex interplay between stratification and rotation

Thermal atmospheric tides can torque telluric planets away from spin-orbit synchronous rotation, as observed in the case of Venus. They thus participate to determine the possible climates and general circulations of the atmospheres of these planets. In this work, we write the equations governing the dynamics of thermal tides in a local vertically-stratified section of a rotating planetary atmosphere by taking into account the effects of the complete Coriolis acceleration on tidal waves. This allows us to derive analytically the tidal torque and the tidally dissipated energy, which we use to discuss the possible regimes of tidal dissipation and examine the key role played by stratification. In agreement with early studies, we find that the frequency dependence of the thermal atmospheric tidal torque in the vicinity of synchronization can be approximated by a Maxwell model. This behaviour corresponds to weakly stably stratified or convective fluid layers, as observed in ADLM2016a. A strong stable stratification allows gravity waves to propagate, which makes the tidal torque become negligible. The transition is continuous between these two regimes. The traditional approximation appears to be valid in thin atmospheres and in regimes where the rotation frequency is dominated by the forcing or the buoyancy frequencies. Depending on the stability of their atmospheres with respect to convection, observed exoplanets can be tidally driven toward synchronous or asynchronous final rotation rates. The domain of applicability of the traditional approximation is rigorously constrained by calculations.

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arXiv2017

Atmospheric tides and their consequences on the rotational dynamics of terrestrial planets

Atmospheric tides can have a strong impact on the rotational dynamics of planets. They are of most importance for terrestrial planets located in the habitable zone of their host star, where their competition with solid tides is likely to drive the body towards non-synchronized rotation states of equilibrium, as observed in the case of Venus. Contrary to other planetary layers, the atmosphere is sensitive to both gravitational and thermal forcings, through a complex dynamical coupling involving the effects of Coriolis acceleration and characteristics of the atmospheric structure. These key physics are usually not taken into account in modelings used to compute the evolution of planetary systems, where tides are described with parametrised prescriptions. In this work, we present a new ab initio modeling of atmospheric tides adapting the theory of the Earth's atmospheric tides (Chapman & Lindzen 1970) to other terrestrial planets. We derive analytic expressions of the tidal torque, as a function of the tidal frequency and parameters characterizing the internal structure (e.g. the Brunt-Väisälä frequency, the radiative frequency, the pressure heigh scale). We show that stratification plays a key role, the tidal torque being strong in the case of convective atmospheres (i.e. with a neutral stratification) and weak in case of atmosphere convectively stable. In a second step, the model is used to determine the non-synchronized rotation states of equilibrium of Venus-like planets as functions of the physical parameters of the system. These results are detailed in Auclair-Desrotour et al. (2017a) and Auclair-Desrotour et al. (2017b).

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arXiv2016

The rotation of planets hosting atmospheric tides: from Venus to habitable super-earths

The competition between the torques induced by solid and thermal tides drives the rotational dynamics of Venus-like planets and super-Earths orbiting in the habitable zone of low-mass stars. The tidal responses of the atmosphere and telluric core are related to their respective physical properties and strongly depend on the tidal frequency. The resulting torque determines the possible equilibrium states of the planet's spin. We compute here an analytic expression for the total tidal torque exerted on a Venus-like planet. This expression is used to characterize the equilibrium rotation of the body. Close to the star, the solid tide dominates. Far from it, the thermal tide drives the rotational dynamics of the planet. The transition regime corresponds to the habitable zone, where prograde and retrograde equilibrium states appear. We demonstrate the strong impact of the atmospheric properties and of the rheology of the solid part on the rotational dynamics of Venus-like planets, highlighting the key role played by dissipative mechanisms in the stability of equilibrium configurations.

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arXiv2016

Atmospheric tides in Earth-like planets

Atmospheric tides can strongly affect the rotational dynamics of planets. In the family of Earth-like planets, such as Venus, this physical mechanism coupled with solid tides makes the angular velocity evolve over long timescales and determines the equilibrium configurations of their spin. Contrary to the solid core, the atmosphere is submitted to both tidal gravitational potential and insolation flux coming from the star. The complex response of the gas is intrinsically linked to its physical properties. This dependence has to be characterized and quantified to study the large variety of extrasolar planetary systems. We develop a theoretical global model where radiative losses, which are predominant in slowly rotating atmospheres, are taken into account. We analytically compute the tidal perturbation of pressure, density, temperature and velocity field from which we deduce the expressions of atmospheric Love numbers and tidal torque exerted by the star. The dynamics of atmospheric tides depends on the frequency regime of the tidal perturbation: the thermal regime near synchronization and the dynamical regime characterizing fast-rotating planets. The dependence of the torque on the tidal frequency is quantified for Earth-like and Venus-like exoplanets and is in good agreement with the results given by Global Climate Models (GCM) simulations. Introducing dissipative processes such as radiation regularizes the tidal response of the atmosphere, otherwise it is singular at synchronization. We demonstrate the important role played by the physical and dynamical properties of a super-Earth atmosphere (e.g. Coriolis, stratification, background pressure, density, temperature, radiative emission) and point out the key parameters defining tidal regimes (e.g. inertia, Brunt-Väisälä, radiative frequencies, tidal frequency) and characterize the behaviour of the fluid shell with dissipation.

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arXiv2016

The impact of rotation on turbulent tidal friction in stellar and planetary convective regions

Turbulent friction in convective regions in stars and planets is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the dissipation of the kinetic energy of tidal flows in their interiors and the evolution of their systems. This friction acts both on the equilibrium/non-wave like tide and on tidal inertial waves in these layers. It is thus necessary to obtain a robust prescription for this friction. In the current state-of-the-art, it is modeled by a turbulent eddy-viscosity coefficient, based on mixing-length theory, applied on velocities of tides. However, none of the current prescriptions take into account the action of rotation that can strongly affects turbulent convection. Therefore, we use theoretical scaling laws for convective velocities and characteristic lengthscales in rotating stars and planets that have been recently confirmed by 3-D high-resolution nonlinear Cartesian numerical simulations to derive a new prescription. A corresponding local model of tidal waves is used to understand the consequences for the linear tidal dissipation. Finally, new grids of rotating stellar models and published values of planetary convective Rossby numbers are used to discuss astrophysical consequences. The action of rotation on convection deeply modifies the turbulent friction applied on tides. In the regime of rapid rotation (with a convective Rossby number below 0.25), the eddy-viscosity may be decreased by several ordres of magnitude. It may lead to a loss of efficiency of the viscous dissipation of the equilibrium tide and to a more efficient complex and resonant dissipation of tidal inertial waves in the bulk of convective regions. Therefore, it is necessary to have a completely coupled treatment of the tidal/rotational evolution of star-planet systems and multiple stars with a coherent treatment of the variations of tidal flows and of their dissipation as a function of rotation.

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arXiv2015

Scaling laws to quantify tidal dissipation in star-planet systems

Planetary systems evolve over secular time scales. One of the key mechanisms that drive this evolution is tidal dissipation. Submitted to tides, stellar and planetary fluid layers do not behave like rocky ones. Indeed, they are the place of resonant gravito-inertial waves. Therefore, tidal dissipation in fluid bodies strongly depends on the excitation frequency while this dependence is smooth in solid ones. Thus, the impact of the internal structure of celestial bodies must be taken into account when studying tidal dynamics. The purpose of this work is to present a local model of tidal gravito-inertial waves allowing us to quantify analytically the internal dissipation due to viscous friction and thermal diffusion, and to study the properties of the resonant frequency spectrum of the dissipated energy. We derive from this model scaling laws characterizing tidal dissipation as a function of fluid parameters (rotation, stratification, diffusivities) and discuss them in the context of star-planet systems.

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