TY - JOUR A1 - Ilić Petković, Nikoleta A1 - Poppenhäger, Katja A1 - Hosseini, Seyede Marzieh T1 - Tidal star-planet interaction and its observed impact on stellar activity in planet-hosting wide binary systems JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Tidal interaction between an exoplanet and its host star is a possible pathway to transfer angular momentum between the planetary orbit and the stellar spin. In cases where the planetary orbital period is shorter than the stellar rotation period, this may lead to angular momentum being transferred into the star's rotation, possibly counteracting the intrinsic stellar spin-down induced by magnetic braking. Observationally, detecting altered rotational states of single, cool field stars is challenging, as precise ages for such stars are rarely available. Here we present an empirical investigation of the rotation and magnetic activity of a sample of planet-hosting stars that are accompanied by wide stellar companions. Without needing knowledge about the absolute ages of the stars, we test for relative differences in activity and rotation of the planet hosts and their co-eval companions, using X-ray observations to measure the stellar activity levels. Employing three different tidal interaction models, we find that host stars with planets that are expected to tidally interact display elevated activity levels compared to their companion stars. We also find that those activity levels agree with the observed rotational periods for the host stars along the usual rotation-activity relationships, implying that the effect is indeed caused by a tidal interaction and not a purely magnetic interaction that would be expected to affect the stellar activity, but not necessarily the rotation. We conclude that massive, close-in planets have an impact on the stellar rotational evolution, while the smaller, more distant planets do not have a significant influence. KW - planet-star interactions KW - stars: activity KW - binaries: general KW - stars: KW - evolution KW - planets and satellites: general KW - X-rays: stars Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac861 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 513 IS - 3 SP - 4380 EP - 4404 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Poppenhäger, Katja T1 - Helium absorption in exoplanet atmospheres is connected to stellar coronal abundances JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Transit observations in the helium triplet around 10 830 Angstrom are a successful tool to study exoplanetary atmospheres and their mass loss. Forming those lines requires ionization and recombination of helium in the exoplanetary atmosphere. This ionization is caused by stellar photons at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths; however, no currently active telescopes can observe this part of the stellar spectrum. The relevant part of the stellar EUV spectrum consists of individual emission lines, many of them being formed by iron at coronal temperatures. The stellar iron abundance in the corona is often observed to be depleted for high-activity low-mass stars due to the first ionization potential (FIP) effect. I show that stars with high versus low coronal iron abundances follow different scaling laws that tie together their X-ray emission and the narrow-band EUV flux that causes helium ionization. I also show that the stellar iron to oxygen abundance ratio in the corona can be measured reasonably well from X-ray CCD spectra, yielding similar results to high-resolution X-ray observations. Taking coronal iron abundance into account, the currently observed large scatter in the relationship of EUV irradiation with exoplanetary helium transit depths can be reduced, improving the target selection criteria for exoplanet transmission spectroscopy. In particular, previously puzzling non-detections of helium for Neptunic exoplanets are now in line with expectations from the revised scaling laws. KW - planets and satellites: atmospheres KW - stars: abundances KW - stars: coronae KW - stars: late-type KW - ultraviolet: stars KW - X-rays: stars Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac507 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 512 IS - 2 SP - 1751 EP - 1764 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foster, Mary Grace A1 - Poppenhäger, Katja A1 - Ilić Petković, Nikoleta A1 - Schwope, Axel T1 - Exoplanet X-ray irradiation and evaporation rates with eROSITA JF - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal N2 - High-energy irradiation is a driver for atmospheric evaporation and mass loss in exoplanets. This work is based on data from eROSITA, the soft X-ray instrument on board the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma mission, as well as on archival data from other missions. We aim to characterise the high-energy environment of known exoplanets and estimate their mass-loss rates. We use X-ray source catalogues from eROSITA, XMM-Newton, Chandra, and ROSAT to derive X-ray luminosities of exoplanet host stars in the 0.2–2 keV energy band with an underlying coronal, that is, optically thin thermal spectrum. We present a catalogue of stellar X-ray and EUV luminosities, exoplanetary X-ray and EUV irradiation fluxes, and estimated mass-loss rates for a total of 287 exoplanets, 96 of which are characterised for the first time based on new eROSITA detections. We identify 14 first-time X-ray detections of transiting exoplanets that are subject to irradiation levels known to cause observable evaporation signatures in other exoplanets. This makes them suitable targets for follow-up observations. KW - stars: coronae KW - stars: activity KW - planet-star interactions KW - planets and KW - satellites: atmospheres KW - X-rays: stars Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202141097 SN - 0004-6361 SN - 1432-0746 VL - 661 PB - EDP Sciences CY - Les Ulis ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Poppenhäger, Katja A1 - Ketzer, Laura A1 - Mallonn, Matthias T1 - X-ray irradiation and evaporation of the four young planets around V1298 Tau JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - Planets around young stars are thought to undergo atmospheric evaporation due to the high magnetic activity of the host stars. Here we report on X-ray observations of V1298 Tau, a young star with four transiting exoplanets. We use X-ray observations of the host star with Chandra and ROSAT to measure the current high-energy irradiation level of the planets and employ a model for the stellar activity evolution together with exoplanetary mass-loss to estimate the possible evolution of the planets. We find that V1298 Tau is X-ray bright with log L-X [erg s(-1)] = 30.1 and has a mean coronal temperature of approximate to 9 MK. This places the star amongst the more X-ray luminous ones at this stellar age. We estimate the radiation-driven mass-loss of the exoplanets and find that it depends sensitively on the possible evolutionary spin-down tracks of the star as well as on the current planetary densities. Assuming the planets are of low density due to their youth, we find that the innermost two planets can lose significant parts of their gaseous envelopes and could be evaporated down to their rocky cores depending on the stellar spin evolution. However, if the planets are heavier and follow the mass-radius relation of older planets, then even in the highest XUV irradiation scenario none of the planets is expected to cross the radius gap into the rocky regime until the system reaches an age of 5 Gyr. KW - planets and satellites: atmospheres KW - planet-star interactions KW - stars: activity KW - stars: individual: V1298 Tau KW - X-rays: stars Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1462 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 500 IS - 4 SP - 4560 EP - 4572 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER -