H3+ cooling in planetary atmospheres (original) (raw)

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London, U.K
E-mail: s.miller@ucl.ac.uk, j.tennyson@ucl.ac.uk
Fax: +44 20 7679 7155
Tel: +44 20 7679 2000

b Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, U.K
E-mail: tss@ion.le.ac.uk, hm@ion.le.ac.uk
Fax: +44 0116 252 2770
Tel: +44 0116 252 3575

Abstract

We review the role of H3+ in planetary atmospheres, with a particular emphasis on its effect in cooling and stabilising, an effect that has been termed the “H3+ thermostat” (see Miller et al., Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 2000, 58, 2485). In the course of our analysis of this effect, we found that cooling functions that make use of the partition function, Q(T) based on the calculated H3+ energy levels of Neale and Tennyson (Astrophys. J., 1995, 454, L169) may underestimate just how much energy this ion is radiating to space. So we present a new fit to the calculated values of Q(T) that is accurate to within 2% for the range 100 K to 10 000 K, a very significant improvement on the fit originally provided by Neale and Tennyson themselves. We also present a fit to Q(T) calculated from only those values Neale and Tennyson computed from first principles, which may be more appropriate for planetary scientists wishing to calculate the amount of atmospheric cooling from the H3+ ion.

This article is part of the themed collection:Chemistry of the Planets

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Article information

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1039/C004152C

Article type

Paper

Submitted

10 Mar 2010

Accepted

08 Apr 2010

First published

07 Jul 2010

Download Citation

Faraday Discuss., 2010,147, 283-291

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