Searching for thermal inversion agents in the transmission spectrum of KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b: detection of neutral iron and ionised calcium H&K lines Nugroho, S. K., Gibson, N. P., de Mooij, E. J. W., Watson, C. A., Kawahara, H., & Merritt, S. (2020). Searching for thermal inversion agents in the transmission spectrum of KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b: detection of neutral iron and ionised calcium H&K lines. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 496(1), 504-522. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1459 Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal
Publisher rights © 2020 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected].
Download date:23. Sep. 2021 MNRAS 496, 504–522 (2020) doi:10.1093/mnras/staa1459
Searching for thermal inversion agents in the transmission spectrum of KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b: detection of neutral iron and ionised calcium H&K lines
Stevanus K. Nugroho ,1‹ Neale P. Gibson ,2 Ernst J. W. de Mooij,1 Chris A. Watson,1 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/496/1/504/5856007 by Queen's University Belfast user on 23 June 2020 Hajime Kawahara3,4 and Stephanie Merritt1 1School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK 2School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Dublin, Ireland 3Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 4Research Center for the Early Universe, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Accepted 2020 May 20. Received 2020 May 19; in original form 2019 November 20
ABSTRACT We analyse the transmission spectra of KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b to search for possible thermal inversion agents. The data consist of three transits obtained using HARPSN and one using CARMENES. We removed stellar and telluric lines before cross-correlating the residuals with spectroscopic templates produced using a 1D plane-parallel model, assuming an isothermal atmosphere and chemical equilibrium at solar metallicity. Using a likelihood- mapping method, we detect Fe I at > 13σ ,CaII H&K at > 6σ and confirm the previous detections of Fe II,CaII IR Triplet, and Na I D. The detected signal of Fe I is shifted by −3.4 ± 0.4 km s−1 from the planetary rest frame, which indicates a strong day–night wind. Our likelihood-mapping technique also reveals that the absorption features of the detected species extend to different altitudes in the planet’s atmosphere. Assuming that the line lists are accurate, we do not detect other potential thermal inversion agents (NaH, MgH, AlO, SH, CaO, VO, FeH, and TiO) suggesting that non-chemical equilibrium mechanisms (e.g. a cold- trap) might have removed Ti- and V-bearing species from the upper atmosphere. Our results, therefore, show that KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b cannot possess an inversion layer caused by a TiO/VO-related mechanism. The presence of an inversion layer would therefore likely be caused by metal atoms such as Fe I and Fe II. Finally, we report a double-peak structure in the Fe I signal in all of our data sets that could be a signature of atmospheric dynamics. However, further investigation is needed to robustly determine the origin of the signal. Key words: methods: data analysis – techniques: spectroscopic – stars: individual KELT- 20/MASCARA-2 – stars: planetary systems – planets and satellites: atmospheres, gaseous planets.
of TiO and VO, as seen in M-dwarfs. These species are expected to 1 INTRODUCTION be present in the hottest exoplanet atmospheres, absorbing incoming To date, we have detected more than 4000 planets orbiting stars other stellar irradiation at optical wavelengths and depositing a significant than the Sun. Despite this ever-growing sample of planets ripe for amount of energy in the upper atmosphere. Spiegel, Silverio & study, many important mysteries remain regarding their most fun- Burrows (2009) showed that a hot Jupiter with solar C/O requires damental properties. One such mystery is the physics and chemistry TiO of at least solar abundance to create an observable temperature driving the presence of thermal inversion layers in ultrahot Jupiters inversion. (>2000 K). Inversion layers were predicted by Hubeny, Burrows & While there have been several claims of the detection of ther- Sudarsky (2003) and Fortney et al. (2008) for highly irradiated mal inversions (e.g. Knutson et al. 2008;Machaleketal.2008; atmospheres, caused by the strongly absorbing molecular features O’Donovan et al. 2010; Todorov et al. 2010), and tentative evidence of TiO in the atmosphere of hot Jupiters (e.g. Desertetal.´ 2008; Evans et al. 2016), it was not until the detection of an emission E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] feature of H2O on the dayside of WASP-121b by Evans et al. (2017)