Born Dry or Born Wet? A Palette of Water Growth Histories in TRAPPIST-1 Analogs and Compact Planetary Systems

It is still unclear whether exoplanets in compact multiplanet systems such as TRAPPIST-1 are able to accrete large quantities of volatiles, grow to sufficient mass, and maintain robust atmospheres and hydrospheres.

Previous estimates of water content in M-dwarf systems have largely relied on population synthesis or atmosphere-interior evolution models, often treating impacts and atmospheric loss in isolation.

In this work, we couple impact delivery, impact erosion, and mantle-atmosphere exchange within a model that tracks volatile evolution through stochastic collision histories. By explicitly including both planetesimal accretion and the prolonged luminous pre-main-sequence phase of M dwarfs, we find lower water inventories for the inner TRAPPIST-1 analogs (b-e), spanning only 10−4-10−2M_⊕,ocn across a wide range of disk structures and impact scenarios.

By contrast, the outer planets (f-h analogs) frequently retain water inventories exceeding an Earth ocean mass. This systematic volatile gradient provides a physically motivated explanation for JWST’s nondetections of atmospheres on TRAPPIST-1 b and c, implying an origin rooted in formation conditions rather than in post-formation escape.

Our results suggest that many rocky planets in compact M-dwarf systems may form already depleted in volatile compounds, fundamentally limiting their capacity to sustain atmospheres or surface oceans. More broadly, our multistage framework for volatile tracking can help interpret future observations of compact systems and set more realistic initial conditions for exoplanet interior compositions and atmospheric models.

Schematic of our modeling framework, illustrating the connection between N-body accretion outcomes and volatile growth simulations. Each panel highlights the primary physical processes represented at each stage of the model. Terrestrial planet formation begins with planetesimals and planetary embryos assumed to emerge from an initial gas+dust disk. Their subsequent growth is explicitly simulated using an N-body accretion model that incorporates processes such as collision fragmentation. The outputs from each collision event and accretion phase then serve as inputs to a self-consistent volatile growth model, which evolves key volatile species such as H₂O, C, and N, based on cosmochemically informed initial compositions. Major processes contributing to volatile delivery and loss include impact erosion and mantle degassing. Roman numerals denote model sub-components: mantle (i), atmosphere (ii), core (iii), impactors (iv), and stellar EUV activity (v). Components (i)–(iii) constitute the three primary reservoirs of the growing protoplanet. The schematic layout is conceptually inspired by Gu et al. (2024). — astro-ph.EP

Howard Chen, Matthew S. Clement, Le-Chris Wang, Jesse T. Gu

Comments: 21 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2510.12794 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2510.12794v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.12794
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Journal reference: Chen, H., Clement, M. S., Wang, L. C., & Gu, J. T. 2025, ApJL, 991, L11
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adf282
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Submission history
From: Howard Chen
[v1] Tue, 14 Oct 2025 17:58:32 UTC (6,254 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12794

Astrobiology, astrogeology,