Less Effective Hydrodynamic Escape of H 2 –H 2 O Atmospheres on Terrestrial Planets Orbiting Pre-main-sequence M Dwarfs

Abstract

Terrestrial planets currently in the habitable zones around M dwarfs likely experienced a long-term runaway-greenhouse condition because of a slow decline in host-star luminosity in its pre-main-sequence phase. Accordingly, they might have lost significant portions of their atmospheres including water vapor at high concentration by hydrodynamic escape induced by the strong stellar X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (XUV) irradiation. However, the atmospheric escape rates remain highly uncertain due partly to a lack of understanding of the effect of radiative cooling in the escape outflows. Here we carry out 1D hydrodynamic escape simulations for an H 2 –H 2 O atmosphere on a planet with mass of 1 M ⊕ considering radiative and chemical processes to estimate the atmospheric escape rate and follow the atmospheric evolution during the early runaway-greenhouse phase. We find that the atmospheric escape rate decreases with the basal H 2 O/H 2 ratio due to the energy loss by the radiative cooling of H 2 O and chemical products such as OH and OH + : the escape rate of H 2 becomes one order of magnitude smaller when the basal H 2 O/H 2 = 0.1 than that of the pure hydrogen atmosphere. The timescale for H 2 escape exceeds the duration of the early runaway-greenhouse phase, depending on the initial atmospheric amount and composition, indicating that H 2 and H 2 O could be left behind after the end of the runaway-greenhouse phase. Our results suggest that temperate and reducing environments with oceans could be formed on some terrestrial planets around M dwarfs.