Radiative transfer in exoplanetary atmospheres

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• Kevin Heng (Bern)
• Wednesday 03 December 2014, 16:30-17:30
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr B.-O. Demory.

Understanding radiative transfer is an integral part of predicting synthetic spectra from exoplanetary atmospheres and also interpreting measured spectra of them. A commonly used technique is two-stream radiative transfer, which approximates the passage of radiation as a pair of outgoing and incoming fluxes. I will demonstrate that the two-stream solutions, the diffusion approximation and analytical temperature-pressure profiles all originate from the same set of governing equations, implying that the values of the Eddington coefficients adopted need to be self-consistent across all three treatments. Surprisingly, the Eddington closure produces unphysical effects and should be avoided. I will briefly discuss applications: computing synthetic spectra, the runaway greenhouse effect and detached convective regions.

This talk is part of the Exoplanet Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Exoplanet Seminars
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• LCLU Departmental Talks
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute

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