arXiv:2106.08349v1 [astro-ph.EP] 15 Jun 2021 uoenMcoaeAscain2019 Association Microwave the European and Press University Cambridge © [email protected] Email: Ávila, Javier Patricio correspondence: for Author satellites. and planets atmospheres, astrochemistry, words: Key 2021 May 9 Accepted: 2021 April 8 Revised: 2021 February 20 Received: S1473550421000173 Astrobiology study. case a planets: free-floating orbiting water exomoons of on Presence (2021) E Simoncini Danielache SO, B, Ercolano A, Chiavassa S, article: this Cite Article Research cambridge.org/ Astrobiology of Journal International –2 https://doi.org/10.1017/ 1–12. nentoa ora of Journal International vl J rsiT Bovino T, Grassi PJ, Ávila ’zr NS aoaor arne dd l’Observatoire, de Bd 4 Lagrange, Laboratoire CNRS, d’Azur, 5 d,Tko 0-54 Japan; 102-8554, Tokyo, oda, fMnc,Shiesr ,D863Mnc,Germany; Munich, D-81673 1, Scheinerstr. 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(Caballero, classes These two the between threshold mass ihKpe”(E)poet(Kipping project (HEK) Kepler” with 1 study case a planets: orbiting free-floating exomoons on water of Presence Chiavassa arcoJve Ávila Javier Patricio Simoncini eatmnod srnma autdCeca íia Ma y Físicas Ciencias Facultad Astronomía, de Departamento ycsi as h aninzto rvri u oe fthe of model our in driver ionization main the chemical rays, The cosmic life. by E primordial in of water development of potential amount the the exomoon than the smaller of is surface exomonoon the Earth-mass on assumi formed and be can conditions water specific liquid time, under that, find inc w We network environment reactions. chemical this gas-phase a model to We coupled surface. code convective their ensur on of water capable atmosphere liquid an of retain severa to prese able by are The predicted moons Center. these theoretically Galactic been the has around planets or floating dwarf) orbit brown that object a planetary-mass (e.g. a is planet free-floating A Abstract a locle ou,nmd non,opa,wneig star wandering, orphan, unbound, nomad, rogue, called Also tal. et tal. et 6 3 , 4 abr Ercolano Barbara , 03 umn21;Liu 2014; Luhman 2013; 08 00.Tertcletmtsso ht naverage, on that, show estimates Theoretical 2020). 2018, , 1 6 oms Grassi Tommaso , at n ieSineIsiue oy nttt fTechno of Institute Tokyo Institute, Science Life and Earth tal. et 01 lno n ad,21)ad25tretilms fr terrestrial-mass 2.5 and 2016) Gaudi, and Clanton 2011; , tal. et tal. et 07,hwvr u oteucranyo as many mass, on uncertainty the to due however, 2017), , 2 tal. et eata sa Danielache Oscar Sebastian , tal. et tal. et 08 Heller 2018; , 02 isa erhn hs aua satellites natural these searching at aims 2012) , 3 nvrièCt ’zr bevtied aCôte la de Observatoire d’Azur, Côte Universitè necó,Chile; oncepción, 2 es rsnesplanets. sunless or less, 06 n oeo h oeta addtscan candidates potential the of some and 2016) tfn Bovino Stefano , tal. et ,D878Grhn e üce,Germany; München, bei Garching D-85748 2, 21)cudb nepee safree-floating a as interpreted be could (2014) n ehooy ohaUiest,8Chiy- 8 University, Sophia Technology, and e S329 -60 ieCdx4 France; 4, Cedex Nice F-06304 34229, CS 01 Bennett 2011; , eáia,Uiesddd Concepción, de Universidad temáticas, swl ieyt eeetdwieretain- while ejected be to likely will ts tal. et e h pc fisfrainaplanet a formation its of epoch the ter rudannselrmsieobject massive non-stellar a around s oes ne pcfi conditions, specific Under models. l tal. et eotd(..Zptr Osorio Zapatero (e.g. reported qiiru iesaei controlled is time-scale equilibrium faptnileoon although exomoon, potential a of e uigcsi asadion-neutral and rays cosmic luding hsi oepoal a probably more is this t n h ogtr hra stability thermal long-term the ing 0) h ocp fsals plan- starless of concept The 000). htsm fte ol otlife host could them of some that 08.Te“utfrExomoons for “Hunt The 2018). , rhs opno r nprinciple in are companion host ir tn ihamr asv planet massive more a with cting gsal ria aaeesover parameters orbital stable ng ae hi ento hne so changed definition their cades anet h nlaon fwtrfran for water of amount final The . etdtereitneclassifying existence their gested xmo atmosphere. exomoon wre,asmn 13 assuming dwarves, n t n-iesoa radiative- one-dimensional a ith c feoon riigfree- orbiting exomoons of nce h netite eae othe to related uncertainties the 09 Kreidberg 2019; , 2 rhoen,bteog ohost to enough but oceans, arth uwgMxmla University Maximilian Ludwig a e n iudsn(2007a) Sigurdsson and bes (FFP). 1 Andrea , tal. et 04 Henderson, 2014; , norGlx there Galaxy our in 5 , oy Meguro, logy, 6 Eugenio , tal. et 2019). , M tal. et J ee- the 2 Patricio Javier Ávila et al. very-low-mass star with a Neptune-mass planet. Similarly, 1D radiative-convective codea (hereinafter named PATMO), along- Fox and Wiegert (2021) suggested that some systems observed side a gas-phase chemical kinetics network including cosmic rays, with Kepler are consistent with the presence of dynamically-stable and ion-neutral and neutral-neutral chemistry. We evolve the sys- moons, but they also report that no definitive detection can be tem in order to determine the chemical evolution in time and the claimed on this basis, and therefore these systems will require equilibrium time-scale to determine the total amount of water further analysis. The detection limit is determined by the moon- formed. Since an exhaustive definition of habitability represents planet mass ratio: for gas giants this is ∼ 10−4 when formed a complicated issue (Lammer et al., 2009), we limit ourselves to together (e.g. in situ formation scenario), that corresponds to an determine if liquid water is present on the surface of the exomoon upper limit of a Mars-sized moons (Canup and Ward, 2006), while (e.g. Kasting et al. 1993), while changing cosmic ray ionization, this could reach Earth-sized objects if captured after a binary chemistry, temperature, and pressure profiles of its atmosphere. exchange encounter (Williams, 2013), depending on the size and After describing the numerical methods to model the atmo- the proximity of the planet and the host star, as well the velocity sphere we present our results. We then discuss the implications of the encounter. of our findings and future outlooks. The orbital parameters, the characteristics of the hosting star, and the masses of the planet-moon system constrain the hab- Methods itability of the moon (e.g. Heller et al. 2014). In the case of a moon orbiting a FFP, the absence of stellar illumination Planet-moon system suggests that the orbital parameters play the main role, since To model the dynamics of the planet-moon system, we assume the orbital eccentricity determines the amount of tidal heat- that the FFP has been ejected from its host system by e.g. a ing, a key energetic process that may favor the presence of perturbation from a gas giant planet, and it retained at least life on the exomoon (Reynolds and Cassen, 1978; Scharf, 2006; one of its moons after the ejection, as for example dis- Henning et al., 2009; Heller, 2012; Heller and Barnes, 2013). In cussed in Debes and Sigurdsson (2007b); Hong et al. (2018); addition to that, the thermal budget of the exomoon could be Rabago and Steffen (2019). The orbital parameters of the planet- controlled by the evolution of the incident planetary radiation moon system depend on the gravitational interaction during the (e.g. Haqq-Misra and Heller 2018), by the runaway greenhouse ejection. Rabago and Steffen (2019) presented 77 simulations effect (Heller and Barnes, 2014), and by processes like stellar finding that 47% of the moons are likely to remain bond to the radiation and thermal heat from the hosting planet (Dobos et al., planet, and that the final semi-axis of a survived moon is less 2017). Despite these models analyze in detail the role of the var- than 0.1 au (for comparison Jupiter’s largest moons are within ious thermal processes, they neglect the effect on the chemistry 0.01 au), but favoring the innermost orbits, as the number of of the atmosphere, that needs to be considered to determine the moons is roughly inversely proportional to the final semi-axis a conditions for the habitability (Lammer et al., 2014). (namely, the probability of having a closer object after the ejection Although it has been discussed that a FFP with an atmosphere is higher). The final eccentricity e is mostly between 10−3 and 1 rich in molecular hydrogen could harbor life (Stevenson, 1999), (Hong et al., 2018). When present, the initial resonance is likely to it is paramount to model the chemical composition and evolu- survive the ejection, allowing the tidal heating to operate on longer tion of CO and water to determine the opacity of the atmosphere 2 time scales compared to the case without resonances, i.e. 10 Myr that might allow liquid water on its surface. Badescu (2010) ana- according to Heller and Barnes 2013. The evolution in time of the lyzes four gases (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and ethane) orbital parameters determines the temporal domain of our model. as the main component of the FFP atmosphere to study the long- In particular, the circularization of the orbit (e → 0) plays a key term thermal stability of a liquid solvent on the surface, and role in reducing the tidal heating produced on the moon by its Badescu (2011a,b,c) studied the possibility for a FFP to host life interaction with the hosting planet, as it will be discussed more in by calculating the thermal profiles and the solubility properties of detail in the Section “Thermal budget” later in the text. For this condensed gas. It is also shown that these gases produces more reason 10 Myr represents the upper limit of the integration time of effective opacities than H , as originally suggested by Stevenson 2 our atmospheric model. (1999). We choose a range of semi-major axis and eccentricity Overall, these works show that FFP and their moons might following Debes and Sigurdsson (2007b); Hong et al. (2018); represent an environment compatible with the emergency of life Rabago and Steffen (2019), with the former ranging between within a wide range of masses and different atmospheric compo- 0.8 × 10−3 and 1.4 × 10−2 au, while the latter between 10−3 sitions, but, to the best of our knowledge, there are no detailed and 5 × 10−1. We assume a primary object (i.e. the FFP) with the models of the chemical evolution of the atmosphere of a moon mass of Jupiter, noting that the stability of the moon-planet system orbiting a FFP. Within this context, we introduce here an atmo- increases with the mass of the hosting planet. spheric model to tackle this limitation. We assume that in the To determine the mass of the moon orbiting around the FFP we absence of radiation from a companion star, the tidal and the radio- follow Barnes and O’Brien (2002) that indicate that a 1 M moon genic heating mechanisms represent the main sources of energy to ⊕ is stable when orbiting around a Jupiter-sized planet. Williams maintain and produce an optimal range of surface temperatures. (2013) show that Earth-sized objects can be captured by a gas To model the thermal structure of the atmosphere of the exomoon giant planet, thus leading to a massive satellite. Since such a orbiting around free-floating planets, we include these effects in a planet-moon system could survive an ejection from their stellar system, as reported in the models of Rabago and Steffen (2019),
aCode available on https://bitbucket.org/patricioavila/patmo_paper/ Chemistry of FFP’s exomoons 3 we assume a configuration of a secondary object (i.e. the moon The diffusivity factor ranges from 1.5 to 2 and depends on the orbiting around the FFP) with a mass of 1 M⊕ (and gravity geometrical details of the atmosphere, however, changing its value −2 g = 980 cm s ) orbiting around a 1 MJ object, that allows to does not play any crucial role in our findings. produce a significant amount of tidal heating to obtain liquid water The black-body effective temperature follows the Stefan- when the atmosphere is not irradiated by any significant external Boltzmann law, radiation. E˙ 4 total (4) Teff = 2 , 4πσsbǫrR Atmospheric modeling where E˙ total is the total flux of energy (see “Thermal Budget” The chemical composition at different heights of a given exo- subsection), σsb is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, ǫr =0.9 is planet or exomoon atmosphere is determined by its interplay the infrared emissivity factor (Henning et al., 2009), and R is with the temperature and the vertical pressure profile. In fact, the the radius of the moon. The lower zone of the atmosphere is in temperature is driven by the opacity, a function of the chemi- the convective regime if (Sagan, 1969; Weaver and Ramanathan, cal composition, while the chemical composition is affected by 1995; Robinson and Catling, 2012) density and temperature. To model these processes and to pre- dict the relevant quantities we employ PATMO, a code aimed at d log T γ − 1 > ∇ = , (5) modeling 1D planetary atmospheres including (photo)chemistry, d log p ad γ cosmic rays chemistry, molecular/eddy diffusion, and multi- frequency radiative transfer. PATMO employs the DLSODES solver where p is the pressure, ∇ad is the (dry) adiabatic lapse (i.e. the (Hindmarsh et al., 2009) to integrate in a full-implicit fashion a temperature vertical gradient), and γ is the adiabatic index, that set of mass continuity equations depends on the chemical composition. If the atmosphere is in a convective regime, the relation between the pressure p and the ∂n ∂φ temperature T is given by (Wallace and Hobbs, 2006, p. 38) i ≡ ∂ n = P − L − i , (1) ∂t t i i i ∂z p ∇ad where ni is the number density of the ith chemical species, t is T = Tr , (6) pr time, Pi and Li are respectively the production and loss rates of the ith species, φi its vertical transport flux, and z is the cell where Tr and pr are the temperature and the pressure evaluated altitude, where z =0 represents the surface of the exomoon. We at the boundary between the convective and the radiative regimes. employ 100 linearly-spaced cells ranging from z =0 to 35 km Since by construction at the outermost layer of the atmosphere and to 30 km, respectively for the low and the high pressure τ =0, from Eq. (3) the temperature depends only on the effective models (see Section “Results”). The vertical transport flux is temperature T (τ =0)=2−1/4T . (7) ∂Xi eff φi = −Kzzntot , (2) ∂z We evaluate Eq. (5) with finite differences to determine if the atmosphere is in radiative or convective regime, applying Eq. (3) where K is the eddy diffusion coefficient, n the total number zz tot or Eq. (6) accordingly, i.e. density, and Xi the mixing ratio of the ith species, that denotes the relative abundance of the ith species with respect to the total 1 1/4 d log T Teff (1 + Dτ) if < ∇ad density, i.e. Xi = ni/ntot. The system in Eq. (1) allows to solve 2 d log p T = ∇ad (8) p d log T the time-dependent evolution of each species abundance ni, or T if > ∇ . r pr d log p ad when ∂tni =0 to find the equilibrium abundances. As discussed later in this section, Pi and Li are both functions of the vertical temperature profile, that is directly controlled by Opacity the optical depth τ. In principle, to determine the optical depth, The absence of external radiation suggests that a moon orbiting a we should track the evolution of the radiation when affected by FFP requires an optically-thick atmosphere to prevent the loss of a large number of molecular lines, that depend on the chemical thermal energy and to keep a temperature that allows liquid water composition and on the temperature, but this will be simplified on its surface. In principle, the opacity of the atmosphere should by using an averaged opacity over the complete spectrum, i.e. a be calculated dividing the radiation spectrum into several energy so-called gray opacity. bins to cover the key spectral features of the chemical species When τ is defined, the temperature of a non-irradiated atmo- involved. However, for our aims, this can be reasonably approx- sphere in a radiative thermal equilibrium can be expressed by imated by using an averaged mean opacity over the whole spec- (Marley and Robinson, 2015) trum (Hansen, 2008; Guillot, 2010; Robinson and Catling, 2012;
0.25 Parmentier and Guillot, 2014). We decided to employ the Rosse- 1 land mean opacity because of the absence of stellar radiation, T (τ)= Teff (1 + Dτ) , (3) 2 i.e. 1 ∞ 1 that holds when the atmosphere is in the radiative regime, and = F (ν) dν , (9) where D =1.5 is the diffusivity factor, τ is defined in order to κr Z0 κv be zero in the outermost layer of our modeled atmosphere and where F (ν) is the weighting function and κv is the monochro- increases toward the surface, and Teff the effective temperature. matic opacity of a mixture of gases composed of N chemical 4 Patricio Javier Ávila et al. species (Henning et al., 2009; Murray and Dermott, 2000) N 2 5 2 Gk2M R ne κν = κν,iqi , (10) 21 p s E˙ tidal = , (14) Xi=1 2 Qa6 where κν,i and qi are respectively the monochromatic opacity at a where k2 is the second-order Love number of the satellite (sec- given frequency ν, and the mass-specific concentration of the ith ondary body), G is the gravitational constant, Mp is the mass of species, with N . The weighting function is i=1 qi =1 the planet (primary body), Rs is the radius of the satellite, n is P the mean orbital motion, e is the eccentricity, Q is the quality fac- ∂B (T ) ν tor of the satellite, and a is the semi-major axis. The masses and F (v)= ∂T , (11) ∞ ∂Bν (T ) radii of the bodies can be determined from planetary formation 0 ∂T dν R simulations and from available exoplanetary data. The eccentric- ity and the semi-major axis are free parameters in our models. where Bν (T ) is the Planck spectral radiance at frequency ν of a black body with temperature T . In contrast, k2 and Q depend on the material properties, specifi- From the opacity we obtain the optical depth as a function of cally on the complex internal deformation processes. By definition pressure, (Henning et al., 2009; Murray and Dermott, 2000),
ztop ptop 3 1 −1 k2 = , (15) τ(p)= − κr(z)ρadz = κr(p)g dp , (12) 2 1+¯µ Zz|p Zp where µ¯ is the effective rigidity of the body defined as where ρa is the mass density of the atmosphere, g is the surface gravity of the moon, ztop and ptop are respectively the altitude and 19 µ the pressure of the outermost layer, i.e. where , and is µ¯ = , (16) τ =0 z|p 2 ρsgRs the altitude z corresponding to the pressure p. Once the gray opac- ity is known, we can compute the pressure-dependent temperature where µ is the material rigidity and ρs is the mass density of the vertical profiles. To obtain the Rosseland mean we employ the satellite. We assume common values for rocky bodies, µ =5 × opacity tables from Badescu (2010), that have been specifically 1011 dyne cm−2 and Q = 100 (Yoder and Peale, 1981). designed for FFPs. These values are valid from 50 to 647.3 K The tidal heating, as modeled in Eq. (14), depends on the and for pressures between 10−5 and 2.212×102 bar. Among orbital parameters and consequently on their evolution in time. the possible atmospheric chemical species that compose plane- However, in our model we assume that these parameters are con- tary atmospheres, we exclude N2 because of the small opacity stant, but we expect that the circularization of the orbit (e → 0) (e.g. Badescu 2010), and molecular hydrogen and helium, since will reduce the total amount of heating in approximately 10 Myr we assume that most of their mass has been lost over short time- (Heller and Barnes, 2013). For this reason we limit the time-scale scales via atmospheric escape, as it often happens in small bodies of our models to 10 Myr, and we plan to discuss the coupling of (Catling and Zahnle, 2009). Other species have higher opacity the orbital parameters evolution with the atmospheric modeling in than molecular hydrogen (Stevenson, 1999; Badescu, 2010), as a forthcoming work. for example methane, but planets formation theories indicate that a The radiogenic heating is determined by the abundances of the methane-based atmosphere is unlikely to exist (Pollack and Yung, radioactive sources similar to those of Earth, hence, we scale it 1980; Lammer et al., 2014; Massol et al., 2016; Lammer et al., to the total mass of the moon following Henning et al. (2009). 2018). Ammonia, that has been for example proposed to be the The internal heat flux for the Earth is estimated between 3 × 20 20 −1 origin of Titan’s N2 (Glein, 2015), and it has been observed on 10 to 4.6 × 10 ergs (Jaupart et al., 2007). About half of the Saturnian moons, but not on the Jovian ones (Clark et al., this heat, around 2.4 × 1020 ergs−1 (Dye , 2012), is originated 2014; Nimmo and Pappalardo, 2016), could also play a role by radioactive decay, while the rest corresponds to other minor as an additional opacity term (e.g. Kasting 1982). Since the sources, including residual formation heat. Although the heat flux amount of ammonia depends on the moon’s formation history could be higher at early times, about 9 times in the early Earth (e.g. Mandt et al. 2014), in our case we assume that CO2 alone (Henning et al., 2009), we include radiogenic heating for the sake controls the thermal evolution of a FFP atmosphere as it happens of completeness, but we note that in our models tidal heating is the in our Solar System, and we therefore employ it in our model, dominant factor, being at most 2 orders of magnitude larger than assuming γ =1.3 (Robinson and Catling, 2012). the radiogenic heating.
Thermal budget Low-temperature chemistry The total energy flux in Eq. (4) is the sum of the tidal and The amount of heating produced by the tidal forces, and main- radiogenic heating terms tained by the optically-thick atmosphere, produces a relatively low-temperature environment, i.e. below 300 K (see Section E˙ total = E˙ tidal + E˙ radio . (13) “Results”), and for this reason we limit our chemical network to include the reactions that are effective in this specific temperature The global heat tidal generation rate E˙ tidal of a spin-synchronous range. homogeneous body on an eccentric orbit, assuming that its stiff- We use a reduced version of the STAND2015 chemical net- ness and dissipation are constant and uniform in time, reads work (Rimmer and Helling, 2016), assuming that photochemistry Chemistry of FFP’s exomoons 5 is not relevant, since by definition a FFP and its satellite do not Results receive any significant radiation from any companion star. The Thermal profiles STAND2015 Atmospheric Chemical Network contains H-, C-, N-, and O-based chemical compounds and He, Na, Mg, Si, Cl, We compute the thermal profile for our atmosphere by employ- Ar, K, Ti, and Fe atoms (necessary in their models for high- ing Eq. (8) and assuming radiative thermal equilibrium throughout temperature chemistry, e.g. lightning). Since in our case we are our work. The temperature on the moon surface (T0) depends on interested in a low-temperature environment, we limit our study the effective temperature Teff (a function of the orbital parame- to reactions including molecules formed by H, C, and O atoms ters) and on the surface pressure p0. In Fig. 1 we show how Teff only. We reduced the total number of species to 101, similarly is affected by the semi-major axis (a) and the eccentricity (e); the to Tsai et al. (2017), and added the reverse rates that are rele- left top panel shows the effective temperature Teff , i.e. the airless vant in our temperature range. We also discarded every two-body moon without the atmosphere, while the other panels show the reaction with a rate constant smaller than 10−15 cm3 s−1 at surface temperature for different surface pressure values, assum- 300 K and three-body reactions which are only active at temper- ing the opacity of a CO2-dominated atmosphere. We note that the atures above the ones considered in this work. For the sake of isothermal regions follow a power-law relation between a and e completeness, from KIDA databaseb (Wakelam et al., 2015) we (as shown by the black reference lines in Fig. 1). In particular, included cosmic rays reactions not present in STAND2015, but from Eq. (14) expanding the mean motion n in terms of a and e, that involve the species in the network. The final network con- we obtain sists of 790 reactions, including three-body, ion-molecule, and GM 1/2 e2 cosmic rays chemistry. PATMO has been benchmarked with the ˙ p (18) Etidal ∝ 3 6 . publicly available code VULCAN (Tsai et al., 2017), providing a a a perfect matching of the chemical vertical profiles. These tests and Since increasing p globally increases the surface temperature, the chemical network are available in the code repositoryc. 0 for operational purposes we choose a specific pressure rather than selecting eccentricity and semi-major pairs to obtain different tem- Cosmic-ray chemistry peratures, and for this reason in our models we change only p0 Since photochemistry is not included, the main ionization driver (and consequently Teff ), instead of varying a and e. Note that are cosmic rays, that consequently determine the indirect for- same (p, T0) pairs correspond to multiple (a, e) pairs, suggesting mation and the direct destruction of the key molecular species. a degeneracy between the orbital parameters and the atmospheric Cosmic-ray dissociation and ionization are parameterized by properties (i.e. different combinations of orbital parameters lead using the cosmic-ray ionization rate (CRIRd) ζ, and we follow to the same atmospheric properties). This degeneracy is apparent, Rimmer and Helling (2013) to compute the atmospheric attenua- being determined by the time-independent modeling of the orbital tion of the impinging interstellar cosmic rays from the outermost parameters a and e, and therefore it represents only an opera- layer, tional method to reduce the number of atmospheric models and to have a clearer discussion of our results. However, in future studies, −σNj ζj = ζ0e , (17) where the chemical-atmospheric model will be evolved alongside the orbital parameters, this apparent degeneracy will be removed where ζj is the CRIR on the jth atmospheric layer, ζ0 the non- by construction. attenuated flux (i.e. z → ∞), σ the collisional averaged cross- Our parameter space is represented by four limiting cases with section, and Nj the column density obtained integrating the total two different surface pressure values (1 and 10 bar) and two dif- density from the outermost layer of the atmosphere down to the ferent cosmic rays fluxes, namely, low (1.3 × 10−17 s−1) and −25 2 jth layer. We employ σ = 10 cm (Molina-Cuberos et al., high (10−12 s−1), as reported in Tab. 1. Our choice of parame- 2002), and to mimic the different locations of the hosting planet ters guarantees a surface temperature for which water is liquid, in the Galaxy, we vary the CRIR between 10−17 and 10−12 s−1, i.e. in each case we always obtain T0 ∼ 274.5 K, that corresponds the latter value to study the effects of a considerably stronger and to 1.35 times the freezing point in our pressure range. The two somewhat extreme case. We also note that this value could be different atmospheric configurations of our 1 M⊕ exomoon are further reduced from the shielding of the magnetosphere of the determined by its formation history and the subsequent evolution hosting planet, as found for example in the Jupiter-Europa system (Lammer et al., 2018), and for this reason the mass of the moon (Nordheim, et al., 2019), or as discussed in the time-dependent has no direct influence on the mass of its atmosphere and on the model by Heller and Zuluaga (2013). These works suggest that in pressure at the surface, as shown for example by comparing the some cases the presence of magnetic fields play a crucial role in Earth (p =1 p⊕, m =1 M⊕), Venus (91 p⊕, 0.82 M⊕), and determining the amount of cosmic rays (and charged particle in Titan (1.5 p⊕, 0.02 M⊕). We therefore assume that the two values general) impinging the atmpshere of the exomoon, affecting the employed for the surface pressure are plausible and that are unal- position of the “habitable edge”, i.e. the minimum circumplane- tered during the simulation. The lower limit of the cosmic rays tary orbital distance, at which the moon becomes uninhabitable flux is typically used in the dense interstellar medium (Dalgarno, (Heller and Barnes, 2013). 2006). The upper limit represents an extreme case found in the interstellar gas nearby a gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants bhttp:\kida.astrophy.u-bordeaux.fr (Becker et al., 2011). Although this extreme value reproduces a chttps://bitbucket.org/patricioavila/patmo_paper/ d very specific environment, we choose this as an upper limit that Note that CRIR rate ζ is defined with respect to the ionization of H2 by cosmic rays, but for the sake of simplicity we use the same acronym also when discussing other cosmic allows to compare the effects of the atmospheric attenuation on rays-driven ionization and dissociation reactions. the chemistry in the high pressure cases. 6 Patricio Javier Ávila et al.
Fig. 2.: Left panel: vertical thermal profiles for p0 =1 bar (Case1 and Case2)and10bar(Case3 and Case4). The surface tempera- ture T0 = 274.5 K is the same in both cases. Thermal profiles are assumed to be constant with time and independent from the CRIR. The gray-shaded area indicates the convective regime. Right Fig. 1.: Surface temperature of a satellite with 1 M , orbiting ⊕ panel: cosmic-rays ionization rate (CRIR) as a function of the ver- around a planet of 1 M . Eccentricity (e) ranges between 10−3 J tical pressure. Note that Case1 (solid blue) and Case3 (dashed and 5 × 10−1, while semi-major axis (a) between 0.8 × 10−3 green) as well as Case2 (solid orange) and Case4 (dashed red) and 1.4 × 10−2 au. Left top panel: the satellite has no atmosphere (airless body), hence T = T . Other panels: same as first panel, overlap, since the non-attenuated ionization rate is the same. The 0 eff higher pressure reached by Case3 and Case4 allows the cos- but for different surface pressures p0 assuming a CO2-dominated atmosphere. As reference, the dotted and dashed lines are isother- mic rays to penetrate deeper in the atmosphere, but with a larger attenuation when reaching the surface. mal contours at respectively Teff = 97.3 and 163.9 K assuming the values of the first panel. The latter effective temperature cor- responds to a surface temperature of 274.5 K in models Case1 and Case2, and analogously, the former, in models Case3 and heating sources are constant, and that the atmosphere is always in Case4. The upper and the lower bounds of the colorbar are deter- hydrostatic equilibrium, i.e. readjustments of the vertical density mined by the limits of the opacity tables, namely 50 and 647.3 K. profile are instantaneous. The area outside these limits is indicated by the dotted hatch. The optical depth found in our profiles increases from the out- ermost layers of the atmosphere (τ =0) reaching τ = 50.33 at 1 bar, and τ = 4767.57 at 10 bar. For p & 10−4 bar this can Table 1.: Parameter space explored in this work. The sur- be generalized with the power-law τ(p)=50.33 p1.97, where the face temperature T0 in every case is 274.5 K. The last three pressure p is in units of bar. columns indicate the case description employed in the text for In the right panel of Fig. 2 we report the vertical profile of pressure, cosmic rays ionization, and temperature, e.g. Case1 the CRIR, for the different models. We note that the attenuation is low-pressure, low-CRIR, and high-temperature. depends on the unaffected ionization, i.e. ζ0, and the depth of the atmosphere (i.e. the pressure reached at the surface). In fact, in the −1 Case p0 [bar] ζ [s ] Teff [K] pressure CRIR temp high-pressure models (Case3 and Case4, surface at p = 10 bar) 1 1 1.3 × 10−17 163.9 low low high the cosmic rays penetrate deeper in the atmosphere, but their atten- uation on the surface is larger when compared to the low-pressure 2 1 −12 163.9 low high high 10 models (Case1 and Case2, surface at p =1 bar). In terms of 3 10 1.3 × 10−17 97.3 high low low CRIR, the right panel of Fig. 2 also indicates that Case3 (Case4) 4 10 10−12 97.3 high high low represents an extension of Case1 (Case2), where the cosmic rays reach higher-pressure layers. All the models assume that the atmosphere of the moon is ini- tially vertically uniform and composed of 90% CO2 and 10% H2 Since we ignore the heating from cosmic rays, being at most (in number density), following a scenario where carbon diox- an order of magnitude smaller than the radiogenic heating, the ide is generated by evaporation from rocks, and locked there vertical thermal profiles reported in Fig. 2 depend only on p0. during the solidification phase when the body was still form- Left panel of Fig. 2 shows the variation of the temperature with ing (Pollack and Yung, 1980; Lebrun et al., 2013; Lammer et al., pressure (and hence with height) for two models with two differ- 2014; Massol et al., 2016; Lammer et al., 2018). Under our ent ground pressures (p0), but with the same ground temperature assumptions molecular hydrogen is a key ingredient for the for- (T0). For this reason in both cases the two thermal profiles guar- mation of water, being the initial reservoir of hydrogen, and antee liquid water on the surface. The vertical thermal profiles unlike warmer planets that are known to lose H2 over relatively are obtained from Eq. (3) and Eq. (7) by constraining the effective short periods because of the thermal escape (Catling and Zahnle, temperature Teff , with the optical depth in Eq. (3) computed from 2009), a moon with a cold environment could retain a fraction of Eq. (12) by constraining the surface pressure p0. In our model the molecular hydrogen consistent with the abundances employed in thermal profiles do not change in time, since we assume that the this work (Stevenson, 1999). This initial abundance of molecular Chemistry of FFP’s exomoons 7
1 1 1 hydrogen is not relevant to affect the opacity, but crucial for the 1 formation of water. 1 1 1 M 1
Time evolution of water formation 1 We evolve the chemistry in time for 10 Myr according to M 1 Eq. (1) and we report in the left panel of Fig. 3 the total amount of water integrated over all layers. In particular, 1 1 1 1 from the water mixing ratio of each layer xH2O,i we com- 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 pute the total mass of water produced in the atmosphere as fi
MH2O = µH2O i ∆Vintot,ixH2O,i, where the sum is over 3 3 Fig. 3.: Left panel: evolution of the vertically-integrated frac- every layer, ∆ViP=4π zˆ − zˆ /3 is the volume of the ith i+1 i tion of water relative to the total mass of the atmosphere, layer, ntot,i its total number density, µH O the mass of a water 2 for the models reported in Tab. 1 as a function of time. molecule, and zˆi = zi + Rs, i.e. the altitude including the radius of the exomoon. Analogously, the total mass of the atmosphere is Case1 (blue) corresponds to high-temperature, low-pressure, low-CRIR; Case2 (orange) high-temperature, low-pressure, high- Mtot = µi∆Vintot,i, where µi is the mean molecular weight i CRIR; Case3 (green) low-temperature, high-pressure, low-CRIR; computedP in the ith layer. The total amount of water formed in Case1 and Case2 is Case4 (red) low-temperature, high-pressure, high-CRIR. The 17 atmosphere is initially composed of 90% CO2 and 10% H2. respectively MH2O =1.32 × 10 kg (at t & 100 Myr) and 1.24 × 1017 kg (t & 100 yr), while for Case3 and Case4 is Right panel: cumulative mass of water at 10 Myr integrated from 17 18 the surface as a function of the pressure, i.e. the ith layer has 2.85 × 10 kg and 1.27 × 10 kg (both at t ≃ 10 Myr), respec- i tively. For comparison, the total mass of water in the Earth’s fi = j=1 MH2O,j /Mtot. Note that for Case 1 and Case 2 oceans is ∼ 1.4 × 1021 kg (Weast , 1979). The total correspond- the surfaceP pressure is p0 =1 bar, while p0 = 10 bar for Case 3 18 and Case 4. ing atmospheric mass is Mtot =5.02 × 10 kg (Case1 and 19 Case2)and Mtot =4.93 × 10 kg (Case3 and Case4). Again, for comparison, the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere is 5.15 × 18 10 kg (Trenberth and Smith , 2005). H2O+CR → OH+H (where CR indicates that the reactant The cumulative contribution to the total mass of water at the interacts with cosmic rays), as discussed in detail in Section end of the simulation integrated from the surface layer as a func- “Chemical vertical profiles”. This scenario might be altered tion of the pressure is reported in the right panel of Fig. 3. For in the surface layer by the destruction of water driven by Case1 and Case2 the surface layers (p & 0.1 bar) comprise condensation/rain-out processes, i.e. the removal from the gas almost the total mass of water present in the atmosphere. Anal- phase (Hu et al, 2012), but this process is not included in the ogously, Case3 and Case4 reach almost the total mass of water present model. at approximately 1 bar, even if Case3 is far from the chemical The opacity of the atmosphere is controlled by CO2, the initial equilibrium (see left panel of Fig. 3). oxygen reservoir. This is mainly eroded by the CRIR-driven dis- In Fig. 3 all the models have a steady increase of the fractional sociation reaction CO2 + CR → CO+O, efficiently balanced water content over time (note the logarithmic scale), followed by by the formation routes CO+OH → CO2 + H and (less rele- a relative reduction of the formation rate (and in some cases an vant) O+HCO → CO2 + H. Since these formation processes equilibrium plateau) that depends on the amount of CRIR and on are effective during the evolution of every model, CO2 remains the temperature profile of the specific model. The final fractional relatively constant in time when compared to water, that never amount of water is similar in each model, but reached with differ- becomes dominant over carbon dioxide, causing our approxi- ent time-scales. A shorter time-scale is found in the models with mation of a CO2-dominated atmosphere to hold. Nevertheless, higher CRIR, i.e. Case2 and Case4, being the cosmic rays atten- water contributes to the total opacity, as reported by Lehmer et al. uation by the atmosphere ineffective and thus leading to a faster (2017), that explored water-dominated atmospheres of moons chemistry, mainly due to the dissociation of the initial reservoir of around gas giant planets. Even if CO2 is partially replaced with CO2 and H2. In these models, the chemical kinetic driven by the water, due to the high optical depth, the lower part of the atmo- cosmic rays is effective in every layer, including the deeper ones. sphere remains in a convective regime (see Fig. 2), and the surface The less prominent plateau of the high-pressure Case4 is caused remains warm enough to have liquid water. For comparison, on by the missing contribution of the deeper layers, where the CRIR the Earth (around 10−3 bar and 220 K) the rotation bands of water is comparably less effective (see Fig. 2). Conversely, in Case1, vapor play a role for wavelengths & 20 µm and . 7.5 µm, while where the CRIR efficiency is smaller, the equilibrium time-scale CO2 is known to reduce the escaping radiation flux around 15 µm, 7 for water is considerably longer, being around 10 yr, and in the where H2O is less efficient (Zhong and Haigh, 2013). high-density Case3 the equilibrium is not reached even within the simulation time. This slower (and not CRIR-driven) evolution is Chemical vertical profiles mainly controlled by the low-temperature chemistry, which is less effective when compared for example to Earth. Our code not only allows to compute the evolution of the total The stability observed in Case2 (but also in Case1 and abundances, but also their vertical profiles as reported in Fig.4 Case4) is mainly due to the balance between the formation for the four cases at 107 yr and for different chemical species 2 channel H2 + OH → H2O + H and the destruction reaction (note that e.g. Case2 reaches this profile after 10 yr already, 8 Patricio Javier Ávila et al.
see Fig. 3). As previously discussed, water abundance is deter- H2 + OH → H + H2O in the upper layers, and analogously mined by the main formation channel H2 + OH → H2O + H HCO + HCO → 2CO+H2 and H2 +O → H+OH closer that reaches equilibrium with H2O+CR → OH+H. The oxy- to the surface, the former reaction employing HCO from the gen necessary for the formation of OH, is produced by the reaction three-body reactions also responsible of water formation. CO2 + CR → CO+O, i.e. controlled by the efficiency of cos- mic rays to penetrate the atmosphere of the exomoon (cfr. Fig.2). In fact, Case3 is the only model presenting a significant varia- tion of water abundance in the surface layers. This specific model has low-CRIR (as Case1) and a denser atmosphere (as Case4), Temporal evolution of superficial and upper atmo- hence the chemistry is affected by the noticeably effective CRIR spheric layers attenuation. In Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 we report the evolution in time for some of The reduced amount of water in the upper part of the atmo- the chemical species, respectively for a layer at p = 10−3 bar and sphere in the high-CRIR models (Case2 and Case4) is deter- for the surface layer of each model (p =1 and p = 10 bar). In mined by the more efficient destruction by CRIR. The difference the upper layers, CO is unaffected during the evolution, as well between these two cases is enhanced by the corresponding temper- 2 as molecular hydrogen. The formation of water and CO is deter- ature profiles, since the reaction H + OH → H O + H is more 2 2 mined by the destruction of a part of CO , as discussed in the efficient at higher temperatures, i.e. Case2 produces more water 2 previous sections. CO is formed alongside water using part of CO being comparably warmer, see Fig. 2. 2 and H that are both non-noticeably affected (note the log scale), In the lower layers of every model the presence of the three- 2 apart from molecular hydrogen that slightly decreases with time body reaction H+CO+M → HCO + M (where M is a cat- in Fig. 5 for Case1 and Case2, as a consequence of the corre- alyzing species) is the starting point of an additional route for sponding water formation. We note here that Case3 reaches the the formation of water. In fact, it favors the formation of CH O, 2 chemical equilibrium around 106 yr, considerably faster than the via HCO + HCO → CH O+CO, that reacts with H O+ to 2 3 full system, which does not reach it even after 107 yr (cfr. Fig. 3, form water by CH O + H O+ → CH O+ + H O, this one 2 3 3 2 left panel). The time required to reach the chemical equilib- balanced by its reverse reaction. This process is ineffective in the rium is proportional to the CRIR that controls the kinetics, and upper layers, due to the relatively low density that reduces the hence the upper layers reach the equilibrium faster than the whole effectiveness of the aforementioned three-body reaction. atmosphere that includes the surface layers, where CRIR are atten- The reservoir of CO remains almost unaltered during the evo- 2 uated. Note that the equilibrium time-scale of the whole system lution, apart from the tiny variations in the upper layers of the reflects the time-scale of the lower layers, that comprise most of high-CRIR cases (Case2 and Case4 in Fig. 4). Carbon dioxide the total mass (see Fig. 3, right panel). chemistry is mainly controlled by the cosmic-rays driven destruc- In the surface layer (Fig. 6) CO and water are always coupled, tion channel CO + CR → CO+O, effectively balanced by 2 and a clear molecular-hydrogen-to-water conversion is present, as CO+OH → H+CO , and by two minor formation reac- 2 well as the self-similarity of the four cases. The CO-water cou- tions that involve oxygen, namely HCO+O → CO + H and 2 pling is determined by the same reasons discussed in the vertical HCO+O → CO + OH. Note that the oxygen produced by 2 2 profile Section, while the time scale of the molecular-hydrogen-to- the CRIR dissociation of CO determines the formation of OH, a 2 water conversion is a direct consequence of the amount of CRIR key ingredient for the formation of water. and the different densities (note that Case3 and Case4 have a Carbon dioxide and water formations compete for OH, respec- ten times higher pressure). In fact, Case3, where the CRIR have tively via CO+OH → CO + H and H + OH → H O + H. 2 2 2 the largest attenuation, presents the slowest chemical kinetics, that Both CO and OH are formed via the destruction of CO and H O 2 2 does not reach the equilibrium even after 107 yr. Conversely, by CRIR, thus obtaining two groups of balanced reactions linked in the high-CRIR and low-density Case2, the CRIR determines by OH. This explains the pressure-dependent behavior of CO and the shortest time-scale of the molecular-hydrogen-to-water con- water (more pronounced in the high-CRIR cases), that closer to version, since CRIR is less attenuated. Analogously, Case1 and the surface present the same abundances, while in the upper lay- Case4 have a similar behavior, since the CRIR has similar values ers CO becomes the dominating species. In particular, in the upper closer to the surface (cfr. Fig. 2). layers the higher CRIR and the lower densities enhance the for- These results show how the interplay between cosmic rays and mation of CO and the destruction of water. This effect is further the density structure of the moon determines the formation of enhanced by the lower temperatures of the high-pressure cases, water in the different layers and at different epoch (see Fig. 2). that reduce the effectiveness of the formation of water (cfr. the In each case the total amount of water formed is similar, but with upper layers of Case1 with Case3 and Case2 with Case4). different time-scales (see Fig. 3). While cosmic rays are crucial in Molecular oxygen presents a clear vertical gradient, deter- determining the total abundance of species and to shape the chem- mined by O +O+M → O + M, a three-body reaction, and 2 3 istry of the middle and upper layers, in the ground layer(s) the O + HCO → CO +O + H, that both play a role in the 3 2 2 density profile of the atmosphere plays a key role. In particular, an lower layers of every model, with their efficiency controlled by the high-pressure and high-CRIR environment (Case4) mimics the different temperature gradients, and by the availability of oxygen behavior of a low-density and low-CRIR model (Case1), due to from the CO CRIR dissociation. 2 the similar cosmic rays attenuation (see e.g. Fig. 6). These results Molecular hydrogen shows almost no vertical gradient, suggest that the role of the variation in the temperature vertical apart from the decrease in the lower layers of the atmo- profile is less relevant when compared to the cosmic rays atten- sphere. The main reactions are H O+CR → H +O and 2 2 uation effect, except in the upper layers, where the temperature Chemistry of FFP’s exomoons 9