Sarah L. Casewell, M. W. Phillips, J. D. Lothringer, F. Sainsbury-Martinez, Pascal Tremblin, Maison de la Simulation (MDLS), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas, University of Texas at Austin [Austin], University of Leicester, School of Physics and Astronomy [Exeter], University of Exeter, European Project: 757858,ATMO, The authors also wish to thank Idris, CNRS, and MDLS for access to the supercomputer Poincare, without which the long-timescale calculations featured in this work would not have been possible., Additionally this work was granted access to the HPC resources of IDRIS (Jean-Zay) and CEA-TGCC (Irene/Joliot-Curie) under the 2020/2021 allocation – A0080410870 made as part of the GENCI Dari A8 call., and European Research Council
The anomalously large radii of highly-irradiated gaseous exoplanets has long been a mystery. One mechanism suggested as a solution for hot Jupiters is the heating of the deep atmosphere via the vertical advection of potential temperature resulting in an increased internal entropy. Here we intend to explore if this mechanism can also explain the observed brown dwarf radii trend: a general increase in radius with irradiation, with an exception for highly-irradiated brown dwarfs orbiting white dwarfs. We use a 3D GCM, DYNAMICO, to run a series of long-timescale models of the atmospheres of Kepler-13Ab, KELT-1b, and SDSS1411B. These models allow us to explore not only if a stable advective adiabat can develop, but also the associated dynamics. We find that our models fall into two distinct regimes: Kepler-13Ab and KELT-1b both show signs of significant deep heating and hence maintain adiabats that are hotter than 1D models predict. On the other hand, SDSS1411B exhibits a much weaker downward heating profile which not only struggles to heat the interior under ideal conditions, but is highly sensitive to the presence of deep radiative dynamics. We find that the vertical advection of potential temperature by large-scale atmospheric circulations represents a robust mechanism to explain the trend of increasing inflation with irradiation, including the exception for highly irradiated brown dwarfs orbiting white dwarfs. This can be understood as occurring due to the role that increasing rotational influence plays on mid- to-high latitude advective dynamics. Furthermore, when paired with a suitable parametrisation of the outer atmosphere irradiation profile, this mechanism alone could potentially provide a complete explanation for the observed levels of inflation in our brown dwarfs., 20 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. Updated version with a fixed typo in the vertical enthalpy flux equation