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Layered convection consists of mixed convecting layers separated by more weakly transporting interfaces. In a giant planet, composition gradients can support such interfaces and reduce heat loss, contributing to delayed cooling of an inflated giant planet.

Exoplanet transit photometry discovers a giant planet through a periodic flux decrement and measures $R_p/R_{\star }\simeq \sqrt{\delta }$. Stellar-radius estimates turn this into a planetary radius. The radial-velocity method discovers the stellar orbital reflex motion and constrains $M_p\sin i$. Follow-up exoplanet transit photometry is required to measure a geometric radius when such a planet also transits; a radial-velocity detection alone gives no direct size. Alternatively, exoplanet direct imaging finds young luminous giants, whose sizes are inferred less directly from luminosity, temperature, distance, and a planetary mass-radius relation or atmosphere model.

The two broad explanations for hot-Jupiter radius inflation are retention of primordial heat and addition of new interior power.

Delayed cooling of an inflated giant planet can arise from enhanced atmospheric opacity, which slows radiative escape; an irradiation-maintained radiative blanket, which insulates the convective interior; or compositional stratification and inefficient layered convection, which inhibit the outward transport of heat. These alter the rate of Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction.

Heating of an inflated giant planet can arise from tidal heating maintained by eccentricity or obliquity; Joule heating of currents driven by atmospheric winds through a magnetic field; or downward transport and dissipation of atmospheric mechanical energy generated by irradiation. To affect radius, the energy must be deposited at a depth and rate that changes the interior cooling balance. Simply absorbing starlight high in the atmosphere does not automatically supply deep heating. These are proposed mechanisms with different efficiencies, not six universally established contributions in every inflated planet.