The future of Jupiter-like planets around Sun-like stars: first steps

Planets that orbit low- to intermediate mass main sequence (MS) stars will experience vigorous star-planet interactions when the host star evolves through the giant branches, including the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase, due to extreme luminosities and stellar outflows. In this work, we take the first steps towards understanding how a planet’s temperature profile and chemical composition is altered when the host star evolves from the MS to the AGB phase. We used a 1D radiative transfer code to compute the temperature-pressure profile and a 1D chemical kinetics code to simulate the disequilibrium chemistry. We consider a Jupiter-like planet around a Solar-type star in two evolutionary stages (MS and AGB planet) by only varying the stellar luminosity. We find that the temperature throughout the AGB planet’s atmosphere is increased by several hundreds of Kelvin compared to the MS planet. We also find that CO joins H₂O and CH₄ as a prominent constituent in the AGB planet’s atmospheric composition.