Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 874, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab1137
Keywords
methods: numerical; methods: statistical; planets and satellites: atmospheres; planets and satellites: gaseous planets; planets and satellites: interiors; planets and satellites: physical evolution
Categories
Funding
- NASA Exoplanets Research Program [NNX16AB49G, NNX17AB56G]
- NASA [NNX16AB49G, 907851] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Atmospheric characterization through spectroscopic analysis, an essential tool of modern exoplanet science, can benefit significantly from the context provided by the interior structure models. In particular, the planet's bulk metallicity, Z(p), places an upper limit on the potential atmospheric metallicity. Here we construct interior structure models to derive Z(p) and atmospheric metallicity upper limits for 403 known transiting giant exoplanets. These limits are low enough that they can usefully inform atmosphere models. Additionally, we argue that comparing Z(p) to the observed atmospheric metallicity gives a useful measure of how well mixed metals are within the planet. This represents a new avenue for learning about planetary interiors. To aid in the future characterization of new planet discoveries we derive analytic prior predictions of atmosphere metallicity as a function of planet mass, and evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on Jupiter and Saturn. We include log-linear fits for approximating the metallicities of planets not in our catalog.
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