Nora Bachmann   (Germany)

 bachmann @ mpia.de

Extracting the 3D structure of hot Jupiter atmospheres with retrievals

With over 6000 exoplanets known to date, the field moved on from detecting to characterizing these planets. Since most of the known exoplanets are too close to their host stars to directly observe them, we have to use indirect methods to extract information. Transmission and emission spectroscopy are powerful observational techniques which allow us, together with atmospheric retrievals, to analyze the atmospheres of distant worlds. Because of their size, hot Jupiters are the most studied exoplanets so far, and with data from large ground-based telescopes and JWST, one-dimensional atmospheric models already reach their limits in explaining the data we get from observations and induce biases in the results. This is especially true for hot exoplanets which have significant differences in temperature and chemistry between their day- and nightsides.

In my PhD, I work on advancing atmospheric retrievals to incorporate the three-dimensional nature of planets. I want to explore what the outstanding data we get from the most powerful telescopes in the world can reveal to us about the 3D structure, atmospheric composition and dynamics of hot Jupiter planets. To this end, I combine emission and transmission datasets at various resolutions, and I work on forward models and a new 3D retrieval code to enable more detailed and accurate retrieval of atmospheric properties. The code will be a powerful tool for interpreting signatures of three-dimensionality, both in current JWST data and at higher resolution in the ELT era.

Supervisor:    Laura Kreidberg   (MPIA)