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Constraining Exoplanetary Magnetic Fields via the Atomic Alignment Effect in Transit Absorption

A spectroscopic method to detect or rule out weak intrinsic exoplanet magnetic fields by measuring how anisotropic stellar radiation unequally populates atomic magnetic sublevels, making multiplet absorption line ratios deviate from their equilibrium 2J+1 values, and how a magnetic field above a threshold destroys that alignment and restores equilibrium ratios in transit spectra.

Dr. Harry Seldon Text

PROBING EXOPLANETARY MAGNETISM VIA ATOMIC ALIGNMENT EFFECT M. Rumenskikh, A.V. Taichenachev, I.F.

This paper proposes a new way to detect or rule out weak intrinsic magnetic fields of exoplanets from their transit absorption spectra, using the quantum effect of atomic alignment. When anisotropic …