Speaker
Description
With advances in exoplanet detection, thousands exoplanets have been discovered including almost 200 confirmed rocky exoplanets. This leaves us with a large number of possible targets in the search for biomarkers. A quick look at our own solar system shows that not every planet can hold on to a significant or habitable atmosphere for an extended amount of time. Whether a planet can hold on to its atmosphere depends strongly on the XUV radiation of the star and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. To this end we use the Kompot code, an upper atmosphere thermo-chemical code, developed at the University of Vienna. By modelling the interaction between these two factors we can exclude scenarios where the atmosphere would not survive long enough for possible life to form. This work will also present how grids of such model atmospheres can be used to constrain the chemical composition and identify which biomarkers remain abundant under the stellar radiation.
