A new perspective on interiors of ice-rich planets: Ice-rock mixture instead of ice on top of rock

Understand

Ice-rich planets are formed exterior to the water ice-line and thus are expected to contain a substantial amount of ices.

• The high ice content leads to unique conditions in the interior, under which the structure of a planet is affected by ice interaction with other metals.
• We apply experimental data of ice-rock interaction at high pressure, and calculate detailed thermal evolution for possible interior configurations of ice-rich planets, in the mass range of super-Earth to Neptunes (5-15 Earth masses).
• We model the effect of migration inward on the ice-rich interior by including the influences of stellar flux and envelope mass loss.