Evolutionary Models of Young Jupiters and Hot Jupiters

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The research to be conducted here centers around models for the structure and evolutionof giant planets which can be used to relate observations of giant exoplanets tofundamental properties such as mass and radius. First, a modeling effort will beundertaken to compute the thermal evolution of young giant planets over a range ofmasses in a self-consistent way, i.e., coupled with core accretion models, rather than withthe arbitrary initial conditions currently used. From these models, both spectra and colorswill be calculated to allow for more accurate determinations of the masses of youngobjects found orbiting other stars. A second project will explore recent revisions in theequation of state for hydrogen to evaluate the corresponding changes in model radius. Itis suggested that this change leads to larger radii at a given age and that the wide spreadin radii seen among transiting extrasolar giant planets may be understood in terms of alarge range in interior heavy element abundances versus the need for internal energysources.This work will improve the return of future space missions to locate extrasolar planets aswell as efforts from the ground by enabling more accurate determinations of basicproperties from observations. The models here will also serve as a stepping stone to theeventual detection of Earth-like planets. The results of this work will be posted on theSETI Institute website and disseminated to the public through articles in popular journals.