Do the TRAPPIST-1 Planets Have Hydrogen-rich Atmospheres?

Abstract

Recently, transmission spectroscopy in the atmospheres of the TRAPPIST-1 planets revealed flat and featureless absorption spectra, which rule out cloud-free, hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. Earth-sized planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 likely have either a clear or a cloudy/hazy, hydrogen-poor atmosphere. In this paper, we investigate whether a proposed formation scenario is consistent with expected atmospheric compositions of the TRAPPIST-1 planets. We examine the amount of hydrogen-rich gas that TRAPPIST-1-like planets accreted from the ambient disk until disk dispersal. Since TRAPPIST-1 planets are trapped into a resonant chain, we simulate disk gas accretion onto a migrating TRAPPIST-1-like planet. We find that the amount of accreted hydrogen-rich gas is as small as 10 −2 wt% and 0.1 wt% for TRAPPIST-1 b and 1 c, 10 −2 wt% for 1 d, 1 wt% for 1 e, a few wt% for 1 f and 1 g and 1 wt% for 1 h, respectively. We also calculate the long-term thermal evolution of TRAPPIST-1-like planets after disk dissipation and estimate the mass loss of their hydrogen-rich atmospheres driven by stellar X-ray and UV irradiation. We find that all the accreted hydrogen-rich atmospheres can be lost via hydrodynamic escape. Therefore, we conclude that TRAPPIST-1 planets should have no primordial hydrogen-rich gases but secondary atmospheres such as a Venus-like one and water vapor, if they currently retain atmospheres.