Extrasolar planet

magnetospheres
Adam Ginsburg
April 16th, 2009
Electron-Cyclotron Maser
 Population inversion in
electron population
 Seen in Jupiter-
Io/Ganymede/Callisto
Obligatory “who cares” slide
 Magnetospheres are pretty neat
 Possibly key to life
 They block out charged particles
Electron-Cyclotron in WD systems
Factors in detectability
 Proximity to WD
 Lifetime
 Thermal plasma
density
Formation path
 MS -> RGB -> AGB -> WD
 May destroy planet
 Or just interact
How many should we expect?
 Erm… not that many.
~10-3 of planetary
systems
 WD-WD
electron/cyclotron
masers have been
detected despite much
shorter lifetimes
ECM in  Bootis
 Hot Jupiter interacting with young F6 star
 Predicted fluxes 1-250 mJy at 74 MHz (4m)
 Measured upper limits ~250 mJy with VLA
 Maybe LOFAR can do better…
Other observations
 Secondary eclipse observations of HD
189733b resulted in a ‘weak detection’
 Most observations result in upper limits
References
 Lazio, T. J. W., and Farrell, W.M., ApJ, 668,
1182-1188, 2007
 Smith, A. M. S. et al, MNRAS, 2009
 Willes, A and Wu, K, MNRAS, 348, 285-
296, 2004
 Willes, A and Wu, K, A&A, 432, 1091-1100,
2005
 Talk 2: When
Planets Die

Adam Ginsburg
Probably the same day, but who
knows?
Checklist - where are planets
 FGKM stars  Yes
 Brown Dwarves  Yes
 OB stars  No?
 White Dwarves  Yes?
 Neutron stars  Yes?
 Pulsars  Yes
 Black Holes  No
 Other?  …
Where will we not find planets?
 Might expect to find planets around all low-
mass stars given enough sensitivity
 Planets are seen in very weird
environments
 What destroys planets or prevents them
from forming?
Hot star photoevaporation
 EUV photons exert
force on dust
grains and gas
 Heat and expand
planetary
atmosphere
Proplyds
 O star photons
‘photoevaporate’
disks
Proplyds
 O star photons
‘photoevaporate’
disks
 Stars that
approach close
enough will lose
their disks
Supernovae
 A supernova blast
wave could destroy
planets… I think
Other blast waves
 So could a
protostellar jet but
those cover a
smaller solid angle
How common are these events?
 Don’t know, I didn’t do the
math
 Still important: Evidence for
SN near Solar System
 Contributes an additional uncertainty factor
in habitability question
References
 Protoplanetary Disk evaporation - Balog et
al, ApJ, 688, 1, 408-417, 2008
 Planet photoevaporation - Ignace, R. and
Giroux, M., ASPC 337, 2005
 SN near Earth - Jonathan Williams,
http://cdsads.u-
strasbg.fr/abs/2008arXiv0808.2506W