Hydrogen Recombination Line Luminosities and Variability from Forming Planets

We calculated hydrogen recombination line luminosities (H-α, Paschen-β and Brackett-γ) from 3D thermohydrodynamical simulations of forming planets from 1 to 10 Jupiter mass (M_Jup). We explored various opacities to estimate the line emissions with extinction, in each case assuming boundary-layer accretion. When realistic opacities are considered, only lines from planets ≥10 M_Jup can be detected with current instrumentation, highlighting that most planets do not have detectable emission. This might explain the very low detection rate of H-α from forming planets from observations. While the line emission comes from both the forming planet and its circumplanetary disk, we found that only the disk component could be detected due to extinction. We examined the line variability as well, and found that it is higher for higher-mass planets. Furthermore, we determine for the first time the parametric relationship between the mass of the planet and the luminosity of the hydrogen recombination lines, as well as the equation between the accretion luminosity and hydrogen recombination line luminosities.