A. Beate C. Patzer

Response of Atmospheric Biomarkers to NOx-Induced Photochemistry Generated by Stellar Cosmic Rays for Earth-like Planets in the Habitable Zone of M Dwarf Stars

Understanding whether M dwarf stars may host habitable planets with Earth-like atmospheres and biospheres is a major goal in exoplanet research. If such planets exist, the question remains as to whether they could be identified via spectral signatures of biomarkers. Such planets may be exposed to extreme intensities of cosmic rays that could perturb their atmospheric photochemistry. Here, we consider stellar activity of M dwarfs ranging from quiet up to strong flaring conditions and investigate one particular effect upon biomarkers, namely, the ability of secondary electrons caused by stellar cosmic rays to break up atmospheric molecular nitrogen (N(2)), which leads to production of nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) in the planetary atmosphere, hence affecting biomarkers such as ozone (O(3)). We apply a stationary model, that is, without a time dependence; hence we are calculating the limiting case where the atmospheric chemistry response time of the biomarkers is assumed to be slow and remains constant compared with rapid forcing by the impinging stellar flares. This point should be further explored in future work with time-dependent models. We estimate the NO(x) production using an air shower approach and evaluate the implications using a climate-chemical model of the planetary atmosphere. O(3) formation proceeds via the reaction O+O(2)+M→O(3)+M. At high NO(x) abundances, the O atoms arise mainly from NO(2) photolysis, whereas on Earth this occurs via the photolysis of molecular oxygen (O(2)). For the flaring case, O(3) is mainly destroyed via direct titration, NO+O(3)→NO(2)+O(2), and not via the familiar catalytic cycle photochemistry, which occurs on Earth. For scenarios with low O(3), Rayleigh scattering by the main atmospheric gases (O(2), N(2), and CO(2)) became more important for shielding the planetary surface from UV radiation. A major result of this work is that the biomarker O(3) survived all the stellar-activity scenarios considered except for the strong case, whereas the biomarker nitrous oxide (N(2)O) could survive in the planetary atmosphere under all conditions of stellar activity considered here, which clearly has important implications for missions that aim to detect spectroscopic biomarkers.

FastChem: A computer program for efficient complex chemical equilibrium calculations in the neutral/ionized gas phase with applications to stellar and planetary atmospheres

For the calculation of complex neutral/ionized gas-phase chemical equilibria, we present a semi-analytical, versatile, and efficient computer program, called FastChem. The applied method is based on the solution of a system of coupled non-linear (and linear) algebraic equations, namely the law of mass action and the element conservation equations including charge balance, in many variables. Specifically, the system of equations is decomposed into a set of coupled nonlinear equations in one variable each, which are solved analytically whenever feasible to reduce computation time. Notably, the electron density is determined by using the method of Nelder and Mead at low temperatures. The program is written in object-oriented C++ which makes it easy to couple the code with other programs, although a stand-alone version is provided. FastChem can be used in parallel or sequentially and is available under the GNU General Public License version 3 at https://github.com/exoclime/FastChem together with several sample applications. The code has been successfully validated against previous studies and its convergence behaviour has been tested even for extreme physical parameter ranges down to 100K100K and up to 1000bar1000bar⁠. FastChem converges stable and robust in even most demanding chemical situations, which posed sometimes extreme challenges for previous algorithms.