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Most exoplanets likely begin life wrapped in hydrogen–helium envelopes that interact intensely with their molten or supercritical interiors for millions to billions of years. Yet, despite their pivotal role in shaping planetary formation, evolution, and atmospheric composition, our fundamental physical and chemical understanding of these interactions remains limited, in large part because they occur under extreme pressures and temperatures. In this talk, I will present new quantum-mechanical insights into how key planetary materials such as water, hydrogen, helium, silicates, mix, separate, and transform across conditions relevant to Earth- to Neptune-like planets. I will discuss how these results challenge long-held perspectives on the origin and evolution of such planets and their atmospheres, and I will outline their observational implications, especially in the context of ongoing James Webb Space Telescope observations and potential future facilities such as the Uranian Orbiter & Probe, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, Earth 2.0 (ET), and the Tianlin Space Telescope.

BIO

Akash Gupta is a theoretical and computational physicist at Princeton University whose research investigates the origin and evolution of Earth- to Neptune-like planets. His work combines mathematical modeling of planetary-scale processes—such as thermal evolution and atmosphere loss—with quantum-mechanical simulations of materials under extreme conditions to uncover the physical and chemical mechanisms that shape planetary interiors and atmospheres, with the ultimate objective of understanding how these processes may give rise to environments conducive to life.

He is currently a Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellow, a Harry H. Hess Postdoctoral Fellow, and a Future Faculty in Physical Sciences Fellow at Princeton University. He holds a doctoral and master’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a bachelor’s-master’s dual degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.

Host: Dongzi Li