Seminario "Comparative habitable planet signatures in polarized light"

CHARLISTA
Dr. Kimberly Bott
University of Washington Astronomy Department, Seattle, USA
Virtual Planetary Laboratory, Seattle USA

TÍTULO
"Comparative habitable planet signatures in polarized light"

ABSTRACT
Recent advancements in polarimeters (e.g. Bailey 2015, Wiktorowicz 2014) have warranted the development of models for the detailed treatment of polarized light from exoplanets. We use an updated version of VSTAR (Versatile Software for the Transfer of Atmospheric Radiation, Bailey & Kedziora-Chudczer 2012) which includes surface and atmospheric polarized light solutions for realistic conditions based on VLIDORT (Vectorized Linear Discrete Ordinate Radiative Transfer Solver, Spurr 2006) to create models of hypothetical exoplanets. We compare terrestrial planet archetypes (e.g. Earth, Venus, Super Earths, Archean Earths) in various configurations around G- and M-dwarf stars to quantify the detectability and distinguishability of their (spectro-)polarimetric signatures. While these archetypes are dominated by distinguishable polarized light features (e.g. the rainbow of the clouds of Venus versus the glint and Rayleigh scattering of Earth), even in combination, some configurations (such as that of ocean glint for a planet orbiting a red dwarf) are far more detectable than others.

Rene A. Mendez
Seminar Coordinator
DAS/UChile - rmendez@uchile.cl