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Predicted diversity in water content of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 1296–1307 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Exoplanet surveys around M dwarfs have detected a growing number of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation. It is expected that some of those planets are rocky planets with the potential for temperate climates favourable to surface liquid water. However, various models predict that terrestrial planets orbiting in the classical habitable zone around M dwarfs have no water or too much water, suggesting that habitable planets around M dwarfs might be rare. Here we present the results of an updated planetary population synthesis model, which includes the effects of water enrichment in the primordial atmosphere, caused by the oxidation of atmospheric hydrogen by rocky materials from incoming planetesimals and from the magma ocean. We find that this water production in the primordial atmosphere is found to significantly impact the occurrence of terrestrial rocky aqua planets, yielding ones with diverse water content. We estimate that 5–10% of the planets with a size of <1.3R⊕ orbiting early-to-mid M dwarfs have appropriate amounts of seawater for habitability. Such an occurrence rate would be high enough to detect potentially habitable planets by ongoing and near-future M-dwarf planet survey missions.

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Fig. 1: Effects of water enrichment in the primordial atmospheres on atmospheric accumulation and planetary growth.
Fig. 2: Probability density distribution of the water mass fraction in the synthesized planets with a mass of 0.3–3.0M⊕ (‘nearly Earth-mass planets’) orbiting between 0.1 and 0.2 au (HZ) around M dwarfs of 0.3M⊙ at the age of 1 Gyr.
Fig. 3: Same data as Fig. 2a,b, but for different stellar masses.
Fig. 4: Planetary radius Rp versus the water content of HZ-NEMPs around 0.3M⊙ M dwarfs in the case of enriched atmospheres with the primordial atmospheric water mass fraction of \({X}_{{{{\rm{{H}}}_{2}{\rm O}}}}=0.8\).

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Data availability

All data from the simulation are available via GitHub at https://github.com/TadahiroKimura/Kimura-Ikoma2022. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The numerical code used in the current study is available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI (nos. JP18H05439, JP21H01141 and JP22J11725). T.K. is a JSPS Research Fellow, and also supported by the International Graduate Program for Excellence in Earth-Space Science (IGPEES).

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  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Tadahiro Kimura & Masahiro Ikoma

  2. Division of Science, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Tokyo, Japan

    Masahiro Ikoma

  3. Department of Astronomical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Tokyo, Japan

    Masahiro Ikoma

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Both authors contributed equally to this work. M.I. conceived the original idea and supervised this project. T.K. developed the entire model of planetary population synthesis partly using a few modules that M.I. had developed. T.K. carried out the numerical simulations and analysed the simulation results. Both authors discussed the results and implications and wrote the paper.

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Kimura, T., Ikoma, M. Predicted diversity in water content of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs. Nat Astron 6, 1296–1307 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01781-1

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