A&A 624, A49 (2019) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201834504 & © ESO 2019 Astrophysics Detectability of atmospheric features of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around M dwarfs? Fabian Wunderlich1, Mareike Godolt1, John Lee Grenfell2, Steffen Städt3, Alexis M. S. Smith2, Stefanie Gebauer2, Franz Schreier3, Pascal Hedelt3, and Heike Rauer1,2,4 1 Zentrum für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Technische Universität Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 36, 10623 Berlin, Germany e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Institut für Planetenforschung, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Rutherfordstraße 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany 3 Institut für Methodik der Fernerkundung, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany 4 Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstr. 74-100, 12249 Berlin, Germany Received 24 October 2018 / Accepted 31 January 2019 ABSTRACT Context. The characterisation of the atmosphere of exoplanets is one of the main goals of exoplanet science in the coming decades. Aims. We investigate the detectability of atmospheric spectral features of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) around M dwarfs with the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Methods. We used a coupled 1D climate-chemistry-model to simulate the influence of a range of observed and modelled M-dwarf spectra on Earth-like planets. The simulated atmospheres served as input for the calculation of the transmission spectra of the hypo- thetical planets, using a line-by-line spectral radiative transfer model. To investigate the spectroscopic detectability of absorption bands with JWST we further developed a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) model and applied it to our transmission spectra.