Jeans escape

plural Jeans escapes

1. countableuncountableastronomyA type of atmospheric escape in which a light gas atom or molecule (typically a helium atom or hydrogen molecule) gains sufficient momentum through collision with other molecules to escape the atmosphere (and gravitational pull) of a planet.

   where a≡m/2k_BT, n is the number density of particles and v is the magnitude of the velocity.

   2017, Kevin Heng, Exoplanetary Atmospheres, Princeton University Press, page 213, The simplest model of Jeans escape [112], a mechanism named after the Englishman James H. Jeans, assumes that the constituent particles of the atmosphere may be described by a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, f_M=(a/π)ne, (13.6)

   2 more examples

   2014, Eugene F. Milone, William J. F. Wilson, Solar System Astrophysics, Springer, 2nd Edition, page 413, As will be seem in Sects. 11.7.2.3 and 11.7.3.2, Jeans escape of H atoms from Venus is negligible compared to other, nonthermal mechanisms, whereas Jeans escape dominates the loss of H from Mars. On both planets, Jeans escape of O, O₂ and CO₂ is negligible.

   2021, Mark H. Thiemens, Mang Lin, 2: Discoveries of Mass Independent Isotope Effects in the Solar System, Ilya N. Bindeman, Andreas Pack (editors), Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Volume 86: Triple Oxygen Isotope Geochemistry, Mineralogical Society of America, page 70, The hydrogen is lost from the system by diffusion and Jeans escapes.