Retrieval of the dayside atmosphere of WASP-43b with CRIRES<sup>+</sup>
F. Lesjak, L. Nortmann, F. Yan, D. Cont, A. Reiners, N. Piskunov, A. P. Hatzes, L. Boldt-Christmas, S. Czesla, U. Heiter, O. Kochukhov, A. Lavail, E. Nagel, Adam D. Rains, M. Rengel, F. Rodler, U. Seemann, D. Shulyak
Abstract
Accurately estimating the C/O ratio of hot Jupiter atmospheres is a promising pathway towards understanding planet formation and migration, as well as the formation of clouds and the overall atmospheric composition. The atmosphere of the hot Jupiter WASP-43b has been extensively analysed using low-resolution observations with HST and Spitzer, but these previous observations did not cover the K band, which hosts prominent spectral features of major carbon-bearing species such as CO and CH 4 . As a result, the ability to establish precise constraints on the C/O ratio was limited. Moreover, the planet has not been studied at high spectral resolution, which can provide insights into the atmospheric dynamics. In this study, we present the first high-resolution dayside spectra of WASP-43b with the new CRIRES + spectrograph. By observing the planet in the K band, we successfully detected the presence of CO and provide evidence for the existence of H 2 O using the cross-correlation method. This discovery represents the first direct detection of CO in the atmosphere of WASP-43b. Furthermore, we retrieved the temperature-pressure profile, abundances of CO and H 2 O, and a super-solar C/O ratio of 0.78 by applying a Bayesian retrieval framework to the data. Our findings also shed light on the atmospheric characteristics of WASP-43b. We found no evidence for a cloud deck on the dayside, and recovered a line broadening indicative of an equatorial super-rotation corresponding to a jet with a wind speed of ~5kms −1 , matching the results of previous forward models and low-resolution atmospheric retrievals for this planet.