Roche lobe effects on the atmospheric loss of “ Hot Jupiters ”

Observational evidence of a hydrodynamically evaporating upper atmosphere of HD209458b (Vidal-Madjar et al. 2003; 2004) and recent theoretical studies on evaporation scenarios of “Hot Jupiters” in orbits around solar-like stars with the age of the Sun indicate that the upper atmospheres of short-periodic exoplanets experience hydrodynamic blow-off conditions resulting in loss rates of the order of about 1010–1012 g s−1 (Lammer et al. 2003; Yelle 2004; Baraffe et al. 2004; Lecavlier des Etangs et al. 2004; Jaritz et al. 2005, Tian et al. 2005; Penz et al. 2007). By studying the effect of the Roche lobe on the atmospheric loss from short-periodic gas giants we found, that the effect of the Roche lobe can enhance the hydrodynamic evaporation from HD209458b by about 2 and from OGLE-TR-56b by about 2.5 times. For similar exoplanets which are closer to their host star than OGLE-TR-56b, the enhancement of the mass loss can be even larger. Moreover, we show that the effect of the Roche lobe raises the possibility that “Hot Jupiters” can reach blow-off conditions at temperatures which are less than expected (< 10000 K) due to the stellar X-ray and EUV (XUV) heating.