Dissolution of planetary atmospheres in magma oceans
Thousands of large planets, ranging in size between Earth and Neptune, were identified in observations from the space telescopes. These planets have a sufficient mass to generate a gravitational field that can retain a huge atmosphere. The traditional view of such a planet consists of the outer atmosphere laying on top of a condensed layer of oxide and silicates — solid like the crust of a terrestrial planet, or liquid like a magma ocean, and deep inside the planet an iron-based core. The purpose of this research project is to refine this traditional view that is strongly biased to the image we have about our own atmosphere by obtaining the dissolution of gases (H2 and H2O) in magma oceans with pyrolytic composition. The project will employ atomistic simulations based on first-principles molecular dynamics (FPMD) to compute the solubility of the volatiles in molten silicate, sample a representative part of the atomic configurational space, and then study the integrity of H2 and H2O molecules. This study will have extreme implications in our understanding of exoplanets and might even explain the famous Fulton gap in the exoplanet distribution.
