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Phd Thesis Magnetic Fields and Habitability in Super Earths

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Phd Thesis Magnetic Fields and Habitability in Super Earths University of Antioquia Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences Institute of Physics PhD Thesis to obtain the title of: Doctor in Physics By: Pablo Cuartas Restrepo Magnetic Fields and Habitability in Super Earths Computational Physics and Astrophysics Group - FACom Defended on October 18, 2013 2 Thesis Advisor: Dr. Jorge I. Zuluaga Callejas Universidad de Antioquia Thesis Referies: Dr. Mario Daniel Melita Instituto de Astronom´ıa y F´ısica del Espacio - IAFE Dr. Natalia Gomez Perez Universidad de los Andes Dr. Gaspar Monsalve Mejia Universidad Nacional de Colombia 3 4 To my crew... Adriana, Aleja and Emilia. 5 6 Aknowledgements After four years this is the result of the joint work of a lot of people that I need to thank for. First I want to thank Dr. Jorge Zuluaga, I am a product of his support, without him nothing of this had been possible. Thank you for be my teacher, my partner and my friend. I want to thank my colleague, Dr. Ignacio Ferrin for his ideas, advice and comments about my work, his reviews of my posters and text was very useful. Thanks to Dr. Mario Daniel Melita, researcher at Astronomy and Space Physics Institute - IAFE in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His suport and help during my research internship was essential for me. I want to thank specially our student Sebastian Bustamante, his help working on the thermal evolution models was fundamental for our research. Thanks to Dr. Juan Fernando Salazar, our discussion, together with Jorge, on the role of life in the habitability of terrestrial planets ends in a proposal of an Astrobiology paper. The main ideas from our debate are included in chapter 2. Thanks to Dr. Johans Restrepo, head of the physics institute for all his support on my work, specially my participations in international meetings and my research internship. Thanks to Dr. Nora Eugenia Restrepo, Dean of the Natural and Exact Sciences Faculty, She helps me to reach this trough her support to my travels and research work. Finally I want to thank the offices in the University involved in this work: Vicerrectoria de Docencia, they help me a lot with my travels to participate in meetings and internship. Centro de Investigacion´ de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales - CIEN, for their support to my research projects. Comite´ para el Desarrollo de la Investigacion´ - CODI, for their support to my research and help with my travels to participate in the meetings. Thank you all for your support, your trust and your commitment with me, I am very grateful. 7 8 Articles Related with this Thesis • Zuluaga, Jorge I.; Cuartas-Restrepo Pablo A. 2012. The role of rotation in the evolution of dynamo-generated magnetic fields in Super Earths. Icarus, Volume 217, Issue 1, p. 88- 102. • Zuluaga, Jorge I.; Bustamante, Sebastian; Cuartas-Restrepo, Pablo A.; Hoyos, Jaime H. 2013. The Influence of Thermal Evolution in the Magnetic Protection of Terrestrial Planets. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 770, Issue 1, article id. 23, 23 pp. • Zuluaga, Jorge I.; Salazar, Juan F.; Cuartas-Restrepo, Pablo A.; Poveda G. Towards the defini- tion of an Inhabitated Habitable Zone: including the key role of life at assessing planetary habitability. In preparation. Clarifying Note The main contents of this thesis comes from two papers published by me and colaborators, and one more article in preparation (see above). I thank all the co-authors their permission to use the text and figures from the papers. 9 10 Abstract During the past 20 years the search and discovery of exoplanets come turns in one of the most ex- citing field in research for astronomers. A lot of these new worlds are Earth-like planets, rocky, iron and water rich objetcs. Some of them are inside the Habitable Zone of their host stars. This is our first step to find a place that looks like ours. Many conditions are required before a planet can be consider suitable to engender and sustain life during billions of years as our planet do. There are a lot of criteria to define a habitable planet, the most of them related only with the surficial temperature and the presence of liquid water on the surface. To sustain the environment for life, the planet needs an atmosphere and additionally, it must have a magnetic field to protect the atmosphere. The rotation and thermal evolution of a planet plays a main role in the planetary magnetic field evo- lution. The rotation period determines properties like the regime of the planetary dynamo and its intensity. This is crucial for a planet to keep its reservoir of volatile material like water, protected against the erosive action of the stellar wind and cosmic rays. Planets orbiting dwarf stars are tidally afected by their host, this detemines the final rotation period (resonance) or the tidal locking of the planet, especially during the very first Myr. At the same time this first period of the planet history is the most afected by the magnetic activity of the host star. We calculate the rotation and tidal evolution of planets and combine this with a thermal evolution model to know how this very first stages of the planetary evolution finish with an stable and protective planetary magnetic field or with an unprotected planet. 11 12 Contents Aknowledgements 6 1 An Introduction to Super Earths 1 1.1 The Planetary Taxonomy .................................. 2 1.1.1 Planetary Formation ................................. 4 1.1.2 Formation of Super Earths ............................. 5 1.2 Mass-Radius Relationship for Super Earths ........................ 6 1.3 Habitability of Super Earths ................................. 7 1.3.1 Dynamics of the Orbit and Spin ........................... 9 1.3.2 The Interior of the Terrestrial Planets ........................ 12 1.3.3 Tectonic Activity ................................... 12 1.3.4 Magnetic Fields and Habitability .......................... 13 1.3.5 Planetary Atmosphere and Habitability ....................... 14 1.4 Potentially Habitable Super Earths ............................. 15 1.4.1 Gliese 581 d ..................................... 15 1.4.2 GJ 667C c ...................................... 16 1.4.3 HD 40307 g ...................................... 16 1.4.4 HD 85512 b ...................................... 16 2 Habitability and the Habitable Zone 19 2.1 Habitability and Limits of the Classical Habitable Zone .................. 19 2.1.1 Planet Temperature ................................. 19 2.1.2 Limits of the Habitable Zone ............................. 21 2.2 Habitable Zone Around Other Stars ............................ 23 2.2.1 Other Factors Affecting Habitability ......................... 25 2.3 Life and Habitability ..................................... 28 2.3.1 Habitable Zone Affected by Life Itself ........................ 30 3 Planetary Magnetic Fields 35 3.1 Planetary Properties Related with the Magnetic Field ................... 36 3.1.1 The Interior of Massive Terrestrial Planets ..................... 36 3.2 Dynamo Generated Magnetic Fields ............................ 38 3.2.1 The Geodynamo ................................... 39 3.2.2 Magnetic Scaling Laws ............................... 40 3.2.3 Dynamo Regimes .................................. 41 i ii 4 Thermal Evolution 47 4.1 Review of Previous Models of Thermal Evolution ..................... 47 4.1.1 The Core Thermal Evolution Model - CTE ..................... 48 4.1.2 The Mantle Thermal Evolution Model - MTE .................... 49 4.1.3 Comparison of the Models ............................. 50 4.2 Hybrid Reference Thermal Evolution Model - RTEM ................... 51 4.3 Internal Structure ....................................... 53 4.4 Core Thermal Evolution ................................... 54 4.5 Mantle Thermal Evolution .................................. 58 4.5.1 Initial Conditions ................................... 59 4.6 Rheological Model ...................................... 60 5 The Role of Rotation 65 5.1 Rotation and the Core Magnetic Field Regime ....................... 65 5.2 Scaling the Magnetic Field Intensity ............................ 66 5.2.1 From the Core Magnetic Field to the Planetary Magnetic Field Intensity .... 70 5.3 Evolution of the Rotation Rate ................................ 71 5.3.1 Role of Rotation in the CTE Model ......................... 73 5.3.2 Role of Rotation in the MTE Model ......................... 77 5.4 Classification of Super Earths Depending on its Rotation ................. 82 5.4.1 Application to Already Discovered Super Earths ................. 82 6 Magnetic Protection of Super Earths 89 6.1 Critical Properties of an Evolving Magnetosphere ..................... 91 6.2 Revisiting the Scaling Laws of the Planetary Magnetic Field ............... 94 6.3 Planet-Star Interaction .................................... 96 6.3.1 The Habitable Zone and Tidally Locking Limits .................. 96 6.3.2 Stellar Wind ...................................... 100 6.4 Magnetosphers of Terrestrial Planets ............................ 104 6.4.1 Toward an Estimation of the Atmospheric Mass-loss ............... 109 6.4.2 Sensitivity Analysis .................................. 112 7 Discusion and Conclusions 117 7.1 Magnetic Fields in Super Earths .............................. 117 7.2 The Thermal Evolution of Super Earths .......................... 118 7.3 Magentic Habitability of Super Earths ........................... 120 7.4 Observational Support .................................... 122 7.5 Conclusions .......................................... 123 7.5.1 In Relation to the Planetary Magnetic Field ...................
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