The Thermal Evolution and Magnetic Field of Hot Super-Earths.

It is expected that many Super-Earths will be detected by upcoming space transit surveys such as the Kepler mission. Since the probability of planetary transit is highly proportional to the orbital radius of a planet, the planets detected via the transit survey may include a lot of hot Super-Earths, which are terrestrial planets orbiting very close to their central stars and with high surface temperatures around 1000 K. In this study, we model the internal thermal evolution of such hot Super-Earths. In our model, the internal density structure is computed taking into account the compressibility of rocks and metal (assuming an Earth-like composition), and the internal thermal transfer through the rocky mantle is simulated by using a mixing length theory modified for the mantle convection that takes into account the temperature- and pressure-dependency of mantle viscosity. As the result of these calculations, we have evaluated the lifetime of magnetic fields of various hot Super-Earths as a function of planetary mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]