Resolving the Mysteries of Highly Irradiated Planets: Observations and Simulations

Modern exoplanet science has an observational bias towards short-period planets. Among other things, these planets tend to be highly irradiated, either thermally resulting in high equilibrium temperatures and/or through high energy FUV/Xray radiation. The resulting planets exhibit a diverse array of physical characteristics unlike those seen on Earth. I present a collection of works broadly encompassed by the theme of understanding highly irradiated planets and a set of new techniques I develop to further analysis of these strange worlds. First I discuss observations of Upsilon Andromedae b, a non-transiting planet I have observed the atmosphere of for the first time, and Venus, Earth’s twin sister that turned out so different. Each of these observations is enabled by a new method I introduce for that class of analyses. I then present my work on radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of atmospheres subject to intense high energy radiation, for which I have developed a new simulation code with a unique purpose.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Mehrle, Nicholas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Seager, Sara

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152557

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/152557