The Origins of Planets for ArieL (OPAL) Key Science Project: the end-to-end planet formation campaign for the ESA space mission Ariel

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Polychroni, Danae, Turrini, Diego, Politi, Romolo, Fonte, Sergio, Schisano, Eugenio, Pacetti, Elenia, Simonetti, Paolo Matteo, Zusi, Michele, Molinari, Sergio, Ivanovski, Stavro
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Polychroni, Danae
Turrini, Diego
Politi, Romolo
Fonte, Sergio
Schisano, Eugenio
Pacetti, Elenia
Simonetti, Paolo Matteo
Zusi, Michele
Molinari, Sergio
Ivanovski, Stavro
author_facet Polychroni, Danae
Turrini, Diego
Politi, Romolo
Fonte, Sergio
Schisano, Eugenio
Pacetti, Elenia
Simonetti, Paolo Matteo
Zusi, Michele
Molinari, Sergio
Ivanovski, Stavro
contents The growing body of atmospheric observations of exoplanets from space and ground-based facilities showcases how the great diversity of the planetary population is not limited to their physical properties but extends to their compositions. The ESA space mission Ariel will observe and characterise hundreds of exoplanetary atmospheres to explore and understand the roots of this compositional diversity. To lay the foundations for the Ariel mission, the OPAL Key Science Project is tasked with creating an unprecedented library of realistic synthetic atmospheres spanning tens of elements and hundreds of molecules on which the Ariel consortium will test and validate its codes and pipelines ahead of launch. In this work we describe the aims and the pipeline of codes of the OPAL project, as well as the process through which we trace the genetic link connecting planets to their native protoplanetary disks and host stars. We present the early results of this complex and unprecedented endeavour and discuss how they highlight the great diversity of outcomes that emerge from the large degeneracy in the parameter space of possible initial conditions to the planet formation process. This, in turn, illustrates the growing importance of interdisciplinary modelling studies supported by high-performance computing methods and infrastructures to properly investigate this class of high-dimensionality problems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16841
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Origins of Planets for ArieL (OPAL) Key Science Project: the end-to-end planet formation campaign for the ESA space mission Ariel
Polychroni, Danae
Turrini, Diego
Politi, Romolo
Fonte, Sergio
Schisano, Eugenio
Pacetti, Elenia
Simonetti, Paolo Matteo
Zusi, Michele
Molinari, Sergio
Ivanovski, Stavro
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Computational Physics
The growing body of atmospheric observations of exoplanets from space and ground-based facilities showcases how the great diversity of the planetary population is not limited to their physical properties but extends to their compositions. The ESA space mission Ariel will observe and characterise hundreds of exoplanetary atmospheres to explore and understand the roots of this compositional diversity. To lay the foundations for the Ariel mission, the OPAL Key Science Project is tasked with creating an unprecedented library of realistic synthetic atmospheres spanning tens of elements and hundreds of molecules on which the Ariel consortium will test and validate its codes and pipelines ahead of launch. In this work we describe the aims and the pipeline of codes of the OPAL project, as well as the process through which we trace the genetic link connecting planets to their native protoplanetary disks and host stars. We present the early results of this complex and unprecedented endeavour and discuss how they highlight the great diversity of outcomes that emerge from the large degeneracy in the parameter space of possible initial conditions to the planet formation process. This, in turn, illustrates the growing importance of interdisciplinary modelling studies supported by high-performance computing methods and infrastructures to properly investigate this class of high-dimensionality problems.
title The Origins of Planets for ArieL (OPAL) Key Science Project: the end-to-end planet formation campaign for the ESA space mission Ariel
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16841