Modelling the Interior Structure of Rocky Exoplanets with Zalmoxis

Pascal, Flavia (2025) Modelling the Interior Structure of Rocky Exoplanets with Zalmoxis. Bachelor's Thesis, Astronomy.

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Abstract

This thesis has three aims: to develop Zalmoxis, a pip-installable Python package for modeling terrestrial-like exoplanet interiors; to integrate it into the coupled atmosphere-interior framework PROTEUS; and to couple it with the mantle evolution module Aragog to simulate the thermochemical evolution of molten rocky planets. Zalmoxis solves coupled ODEs for hydrostatic equilibrium, mass conservation, and gravity to compute interior profiles for planets up to 50 Earth masses. It models rocky super-Earths and water-rich planets, converging in ~5 seconds for a 1 Earth mass planet. Validated against mass-radius relations and structure profiles from literature, Zalmoxis supports efficient parameter exploration. Integrated into PROTEUS, the Zalmoxis-Aragog pipeline enables self-consistent simulations of thermochemical and volatile evolution. Simulations of 1-7 Earth mass planets show that increasing mass lowers outgassing efficiency, surface pressure, and H₂O release, with H₂O dominating in 1-2 Earth mass planets. Aragog fails to reproduce bottom-up crystallization in >2 Earth mass planets, likely due to limitations in melting curve extrapolations. Future work includes improving Aragog’s melting curve coverage and incorporating phase-aware EOS into Zalmoxis.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Lichtenberg, T.
Degree programme:	Astronomy
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Jul 2025 10:21
Last Modified:	15 Jul 2025 10:21
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/36226

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