2025/10/08 by Rajesh Arora, Sanjay Ranjan, Arora, R. +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.07378
openalex publication_date 2025/10/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
H2-dominated terrestrial exoplanets are highly accessible to atmospheric characterization via transmission spectroscopy, but such atmospheres are generally thought to be unstable to escape. Here, we propose that close-in, eccentric terrestrial exoplanets can sustain H2-dominated atmospheres due to intense tidally-driven volcanic degassing. We develop an interior-atmosphere framework to assess whether volcanic outgassing can sustain \chH2-dominated atmospheres over geologic timescales (≥1 Gyr). We incorporate interior redox state, tidal heating, volatile inventory, and planetary parameters to compute outgassing fluxes and confront them with energy-limited hydrodynamic escape. We demonstrate that to sustain an H2-dominated atmosphere, a terrestrial exoplanet must have a water-rich basal magma ocean and reduced melts, in addition to high eccentricity. We additionally demonstrate that detection of a specifically thin H2-dominated atmosphere is a sign of current magmatic outgassing. We delineate an "outgassing zone" (OZ) most favorable to the existence of such planets, and identify the most observationally compelling targets. We propose combining precise mass-radius-eccentricity measurements with JWST constraints on atmospheric mean molecular mass μ to search for thin H2-dominated atmospheres. Inversely, we argue that robust atmospheric non-detections on OZ exoplanets can constrain the planetary interior, including melt redox state, mantle melt fraction and volatile inventory, and tidal heat flux.