Species abundances in WASP-77A

DOI

Idealized protoplanetary disk and giant planet formation models have been interpreted to suggest that a giant planet's atmospheric abundances can be used to infer its formation location in its parent protoplanetary disk. It has recently been reported that the hot Jupiter WASP-77Ab has subsolar atmospheric carbon and oxygen abundances with a solar C/O abundance ratio. Assuming solar carbon and oxygen abundances for its host star WASP-77A, WASP-77Ab's atmospheric carbon and oxygen abundances possibly indicate that it accreted its envelope interior to its parent protoplanetary disk's H2O ice line from carbon-depleted gas with little subsequent planetesimal accretion or core erosion. We show that the photospheric abundances of carbon and oxygen in WASP-77A are supersolar with a subsolar C/O abundance ratio, implying that WASP-77Ab's atmosphere has significantly substellar carbon and oxygen abundances with a superstellar C/O ratio. Our result possibly indicates that WASP-77Ab's envelope was accreted by the planet beyond its parent protoplanetary disk's H_2_O ice line. While numerous theoretical complications to these idealized models have now been identified, the possibility of nonsolar protoplanetary disk abundance ratios confound even the most sophisticated protoplanetary disk and giant planet formation models. We therefore argue that giant planet atmospheric abundance ratios can only be meaningfully interpreted relative to the possibly nonsolar mean compositions of their parent protoplanetary disks as recorded in the photospheric abundances of their dwarf host stars.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.51630159
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/163/159
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/163/159
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/163/159
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/163/159
Provenance
Creator Reggiani H.; Schlaufman K.C.; Healy B.F.; Lothringer J.D.; Sing D.K.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2022
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Exoplanet Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics