Speaker
Description
High-energy stellar radiation (extreme ultraviolet and X-rays, collectively XUV) plays a pivotal role in Star-Planet Interactions (SPI), profoundly shaping the chemical composition and evolution of exoplanetary atmospheres. In this work, we assess the capability of the Ariel space mission to detect spectral signatures resulting from XUV radiation. To this end, we employ cpzephyr, a newly developed 1D chemical kinetics and photochemistry code designed to robustly simulate highly irradiated environments. cp_zephyr explicitly accounts for vertical mixing and photochemistry, incorporating a highly detailed treatment of ionization processes. By investigating a sample of eight gas giants and sub-Neptunes, we find that while XUV radiation impacts the atmospheric chemistry in all cases, these effects translate into detectable spectral signatures only for planets orbiting the most active stars.