New frontiers of high-resolution spectroscopy: Probing the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and reflected light from exoplanets

Birkby, Jayne; Alonso, R.; Brogi, Matteo; Charbonneau, David; Fortney, Jonathan; Hoyer, S.; Johnson, John Asher; de Kok, Remco; Lopez-Morales, Mercedes; Montet, Ben; Snellen, Ignas
Referencia bibliográfica

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #3, #401.04. BAAS volume 47 #6, November 2015.

Fecha de publicación:
12
2015
Número de autores
11
Número de autores del IAC
2
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
High-resolution spectroscopy (R>25,000) is a robust and powerful tool in the near-infrared characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. It has unambiguously revealed the presence of carbon monoxide and water in several hot Jupiters, measured the rotation rate of beta Pic b, and suggested the presence of fast day-to-night winds in one atmosphere. The method is applicable to transiting, non-transiting, and directly-imaged planets. It works by resolving broad molecular bands in the planetary spectrum into a dense, unique forest of individual lines and tracing them directly by their Doppler shift, while the star and tellurics remain essentially stationary. I will focus on two ongoing efforts to expand this technique. First, I will present new results on 51 Peg b revealing its infrared atmospheric compositional properties, then I will discuss an ongoing optical HARPS-N/TNG campaign (due mid October 2015) to obtain a detailed albedo spectrum of 51 Peg b at 387-691 nm in bins of 50nm. This spectrum would provide strong constraints on the previously claimed high albedo and potentially cloudy nature of this planet. Second, I will discuss preliminary results from Keck/NIRSPAO observations (due late September 2015) of LHS 6343 C, a 1000 K transiting brown dwarf with an M-dwarf host star. The high-resolution method converts this system into an eclipsing, double-lined spectroscopic binary, thus allowing dynamical mass and radius estimates of the components, free from astrophysical assumptions. Alongside probing the atmospheric composition of the brown dwarf, these data would provide the first model-independent study of the bulk properties of an old brown dwarf, with masses accurate to <5%, placing a crucial constraint on brown dwarf evolution models.