Space Weather on Exoplanets (Invited Presentation)

The recent effort to detect Earth-like exoplanets has led to the detection of number of candidate terrestrial planets. However, the majority of these planets are found to orbit their host star at a very short orbit, and an extremely closed proximity to the star (particularly M-dwarf stars). At this close proximity, the space environment at which the planets reside in is much more extreme for two reasons. First, the stellar radiation (especially EUV and X-ray radiation) is much greater than the radiation Earth receives. Second, the physical space environment near the planet is much more extreme than that near the Earth, mostly due to the much higher gas density near the planet, which can be orders of magnitude higher than at 1AU. In my talk, I will review the different aspects of space weather as they are expected to manifest in these short-orbit planets, and will highlight some unique space physics processes that these planets might introduce.