Seminar by Mara Attia (University of Groningen) – « From equation of state to escaping wind: a rocky exoplanet as one thermodynamic system »

The same point in the mass–radius diagram can hold a frozen exoplanet or one with a deep magma ocean, and the atmospheric observations that could tell them apart are shaped by the interior they are meant to probe. I will treat these as one problem, following a single thermodynamic chain from a planet’s core to the wind leaving its atmosphere, through four pieces of work in the PROTEUS planetary evolution framework: (i) phase-aware equations of state under which thermal expansion alone inflates a hot silicate radius by up to 16%; (ii) coupled sub-Neptune models in which the location of the water, dissolved in the melt or standing above it, sets the transit radius through two effects of opposite sign; (iii) a general solution of the multispecies escape problem, under which a wind sorts an atmosphere only when its bulk is heavy; (iv) and a regime dispatcher that makes the atmospheric escape regime an output rather than a choice. I will close on what the chain still cannot do.