Evidence for H2 Dissociation and Recombination Heat Transport in the Atmosphere of KELT-9b
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Phase curve observations provide an opportunity to study the energy budgets of exoplanets by quantifying the amount of heat redistributed from their daysides to their nightsides. Theories of phase curves for hot Jupiters have focused on the balance between radiation and dynamics as the primary parameter controlling heat redistribution. However, recent phase curves have shown deviations from the trends that emerge from this theory, which has led to work on additional processes that may affect hot Jupiter energy budgets. One such process, molecular hydrogen dissociation and recombination, can enhance energy redistribution on ultra-hot Jupiters with temperatures above ∼2000 K. In order to study the impact of H 2 dissociation on ultra-hot Jupiters, we present a phase curve of KELT-9b observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope at 4.5 μ m. KELT-9b is the hottest known transiting planet, with a 4.5 μ m dayside brightness temperature of and a nightside temperature of . We observe a phase curve amplitude of 0.609 ± 0.020 and an offset of . The observed amplitude is too small to be explained by a simple balance between radiation and advection. General circulation models (GCMs) and an energy balance model that include the effects of H 2 dissociation and recombination provide a better match to the data. The GCMs, however, predict a maximum phase offset of 5°, which disagrees with our observations at >5 σ confidence. This discrepancy may be due to magnetic effects in the planet’s highly ionized atmosphere.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".