Stellar wind interaction and pick-up ion escape of the Kepler-11 “super-Earths”

Aims. We study the interactions between stellar wind and the extended hydrogen-dominated upper atmospheres of planets. We esti-mate the resulting escape of planetary pick-up ions from the five “super-Earths ” in the compact Kepler-11 system and compare the escape rates with the efficiency of the thermal escape of neutral hydrogen atoms. Methods. Assuming the stellar wind of Kepler-11 is similar to the solar wind, we use a polytropic 1D hydrodynamic wind model to estimate the wind properties at the planetary orbits. We apply a direct simulation Monte Carlo model to model the hydrogen coronae and the stellar wind plasma interaction around Kepler-11b–f within a realistic expected heating efficiency range of 15–40%. The same model is used to estimate the ion pick-up escape from the XUV heated and hydrodynamically extended upper atmospheres of Kepler-11b–f. From the interaction model, we study the influence of possible magnetic moments, calculate the charge exchange and photoionization production rates of planetary ions, and estimate the loss rates of pick-up H+ ions for all five planets. We compare the results between the five “super-Earths ” and the thermal escape rates of the neutral planetary hydrogen atoms. Results. Our results show that a huge neutral hydrogen corona is formed around the planet for all Kepler-11b–f exoplanets. The non-symmetric form of the corona changes from planet to planet and is defined mostly by radiation pressure and gravitational ef