Fig. 4: Atmospheric spectral retrievals for frameworks with free chemistry.
From: Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b
a, Temperature profile contours (68% confidence) constrained by the retrievals at each orbital phase (see legends). All frameworks produced consistent non-inverted thermal profiles that are consistent with two-dimensional radiative–convective equilibrium and photochemical models along the equator23 (black curves) over the range of pressures probed by the observations (black bars). b, H2O abundance posterior distributions (volume mixing ratios). The shaded areas denote the span of the 68% confidence intervals. The green and blue bars on each panel denote the abundances predicted by equilibrium and disequilibrium chemistry solar-abundance models23, respectively, at the pressures probed by the observations (1–10−3 bar, approximately). c, The same as in b but for CH4. The retrieved water abundances are consistent with either equilibrium or disequilibrium chemistry estimations for solar composition (500 ppm), whereas the retrieved upper limits to the CH4 abundance are more consistent with disequilibrium chemistry predictions.
