Modeling Exoplanetary Atmospheres: An Overview

While atmospheres often make up only a tiny fraction of a planet’s mass, they have an out-sized importance in determining a number of physical properties of planets, how they evolve with time, and their physical appearance. Connections are made to the well-studied atmospheres of brown dwarfs as well as sub-Neptunes and terrestrial planets, where appropriate. Illustrative ex amples of model atmosphere retrievals on a thermal emission spectrum are given and connections are made between atmospheric abundances and the predictions of planet formation models.