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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Exoplanets
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1398379
This article is part of the Research Topic Editor’s Challenge In Stellar and Solar Physics: The Magnetic Life Of Stars And The Planets That Orbit Them View all articles

A Fresh Look into the Interaction of Exoplanets Magnetosphere with Stellar Winds using MHD Simulations

Provisionally accepted
Fatemeh Bagheri Fatemeh Bagheri 1*Ramon Lopez Ramon Lopez 2Kevin Pham Kevin Pham 3
  • 1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, United States
  • 2 University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Virginia, United States
  • 3 High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Boulder, Colorado, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Numerous numerical studies have been carried out in recent years that simulate different aspects of exoplanets' magnetosphere and stellar winds. These studies have focused primarily on hot Jupiters with sun-like stars. This study addresses the challenges inherent in utilizing existing MHD codes to model hot Jupiter-star systems. Due to the scaling of the system and the assumption of a uniformly flowing stellar wind at the outer boundary of the simulation, MHD codes necessitate a minimum distance of greater than 0.4 au for a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a sun-like star to avoid substantial violations of the code's assumptions. Additionally, employing the GAMERA (Grid Agnostic MHD for Extended Research Applications) MHD code, we simulate star-planet interactions considering various stellar types (Sun-like and M Dwarf stars) with both Jupiter-like and rocky planets positioned at varying orbital distances. Furthermore, we explore the impact of tidal locking on the total power within the magnetosphere-ionosphere systems.

    Keywords: Exoplanet, MHD simulations, AKR Emission, Planetary magnetic field, Close-in Exoplanet

    Received: 09 Mar 2024; Accepted: 08 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Bagheri, Lopez and Pham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Fatemeh Bagheri, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.