Eric Gaidos

Eric Gaidos

Professor

Highlights from Recent Publications

You can find my complete bibliography at my Google Scholar profile or at NASA ADS.

Journal Articles

Mass, Gas, and Gauss around a T Tauri Star with SPIRou

Published:

At the time of this project, IRAS04125+2092b was the youngest known transiting planet. It orbits a 3 Myr-old, low-mass member of the Taurus Molecular Cloud that also hosts disk with a large central cavity. The planet is nearly the size of Jupiter and could either be a bona fide Jovian planet or low-mass planet with a highly inflated envelope of hydrogen and helium, i.e. an ancestor to the population of sub-Neptunes seen around middle-aged stars. Mu colleague Jean-François and I, with the help of members of the SPIRou team, used the SPIRou infrared spectropolarimeter on the CFHT telescope on Maunakea to constrain the mass of the object and study the star’s magnetic field. Serendipitously, we discovered that a wind from a highly-inclined, gas disk that could be interacting with the planet.

Citation: Donati, J.-F., Gaidos, E. et al. (2025). Astronomy & Astrophysics 698, L14.
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Water-cooled (sub)-Neptunes get better gas mileage

Published:

In this work my colleague Tatsuya and I use a self-consistent hydrodynamic-radiative-chemical model of atmospheric outflow to show that sub-Neptunes with water vapor in their upper atmospheres can retain their envelopes against stellar radiation-driven escape. Since the water-vapor in the atmosphere is sensitive to the planet’s equilibrium temperature through the Clausius-Claperyon relation, this creates an ``oasis” for sub-Neptunes at intermediate distances and explains a puzzling feature of the demographics of kepler sub-Neptunes around M dwarfs. It also predicts that water-poor systems like those seen around M dwarfs will host fewer sub-Neptunes relative to rocky super-Earths, in accord with available observations.

Citation: Yoshida, T. and Gaidos, E. (2025) Astronomy & Astrophysics 696, L13.
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