petrafit: Rapid Silicate Cloud Identification in Substellar and Exoplanet Atmospheres

Broad wavelength observations of substellar objects via JWST offers unprecedented insight into the atmospheric processes that shape their spectra. Over the past four cycles, JWST has refined our understanding of extrasolar world clouds by providing high signal to noise and (at times high resolution) examinations of the 9 μm silicate absorption feature. Cloud formation, growth, and transport are all physical parameters of atmospheres that we can model using newly acquired datasets. The abundance of spectral data is exciting but it also creates a challenge for object-specific characterization via atmospheric retrievals. The computational expense of incorporating cloud microphysics into self-consistent models prevents robust characterization of the 9 μm silicate feature. In this poster, we introduce petrafit, a novel modeling technique that post-processes self-consistent models to characterize high altitude silicate clouds in any atmosphere observed to have 9 μm absorption. Using this technique we constrain possible high-altitude cloud characteristics including composition, location, vertical extent, particle size, and cloud mass. Our proposed cloud modeling approach can be used on individual objects to quickly identify the most likely cloud combinations in preparation for more computationally expensive retrievals. It can also be used to study cloud characteristics on a population level, which can identify the most effective parameters needed to bridge the gap between observations and existing self-consistent models.