By using climate models based on the Earth’s climate, you can get information about how the climate on exoplanets can look like. ROCKE-3D is a general circulation model based on ModelE2, which is used for simulations of modern and prehistoric Earth’s climate. ROCKE-3D, on the other hand, is used to simulate terrestrial planets both in our solar system and around other stars. The orbital eccentricity affects a planet’s climate, if the eccentricity is high, the planet will be closer to its star certain parts of the year and further away from it for other parts. Because of this, it is interesting to study the eccentricity’s influence on the climate of exoplanets, especially since the boundaries of the habitable zone change. In this report, the climate of an Earth-like planet with varying orbital eccentricity has been investigated using ROCKE-3D. The results show that the annual average temperature increased if the eccentricity increased, even though it was expected to decrease because the planet was further away from its star for longer periods than it was closer. The reason for this was that the ocean dampened the surface temperature drop. The amount of snow and ice was also examined. As eccentricity increased, the ocean ice became thicker and snow accumulated in the northern hemisphere. This can be explained, even though the annual average temperature increased due to the warmer winters, by the fact that the temperature in the summer decreased so much that the snow and ocean ice did not melt away completely and started to accumulate for the years with higher eccentricities.

The detection of Earth-like exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres is a challenge one needs to solve to assess their habitability and the presence of life in the universe. If this challenge is still unresolved today, even in the era of giant telescopes, it is mainly because of the very high contrast between these exoplanets and their host star and also their proximity. To overcome both of these constraints, a new method combining high-dispersion spectroscopy and nulling interferometry has been imagined. The idea is to use the nulling interferometry to attenuate the star light emission and detect the inner rocky planets with a high angular resolution. The high-dispersion spectroscopy is increasing the exoplanet detectability significantly which enables to relax the star attenuation requirement for an Earth-like observation. Our simulation made for an exoplanet similar to the Earth orbiting Proxima Centauri is giving a condition for the star attenuation ∼10−4 to detect it. Given this condition, we are able to evaluate the unability of a photonic device at our disposal to achieve such performance without dealing with its limitations. If a future project manages to overcome these limitations, this device could be part of a precursor instrument at IPAG to demonstrate experimentally the performance of high-dispersion nulling interferometry. / Upptäckten av jordliknande exoplaneter och karakteriseringen av deras atmosfärer är en utmaning man behöver lösa för att bedöma deras beboelighet och närvaron av liv i universum. Om denna utmaning fortfarande inte är löst idag, även i jätteteleskopens tid, beror det främst på den mycket höga kontrasten mellan dessa exoplaneter och deras värdstjärna och också deras närhet. För att övervinna båda dessa begränsningar har en ny metod som kombinerar högdispersionsspektroskopi och nullingsinterferometri föreställts. Idéen är att använda nullingsinterferometrin för att minska stjärnljusemissionen och upptäcka de inre steniga planeterna med hög vinkelupplösning. Spektroskopin med hög dispersion ökar exoplanetens detekterbarhet betydligt vilket gör det möjligt att minska stjärndämpningsbehovet för en jordliknande observation. Vår simulering för en exoplanet som liknar jorden som kretsar omkring Proxima Centauri ger ett tillstånd för stjärndämpningen att ∼10−4 för att upptäcka den. Med tanke på detta villkor kan vi utvärdera oförmågan hos en fotonisk enhet till vårt förfogande för att uppnå sådan prestanda utan att hantera dess begränsningar. Om ett framtida projekt lyckas övervinna dessa begränsningar kan den här enheten vara en del av ett föregångarinstrument på IPAG för att experimentellt visa prestanda för högdispersionsnullningsinterferometri.