  Semidiurnal atmospheric thermal tides are important for terrestrial
exoplanets in the habitable zone of their host stars. With solid tides, they
torque these planets, thus contributing to determine their rotation states as
well as their climate. Given the complex dynamics of thermal tides, analytical
models are essential to understand its dependence on the structure and rotation
of planetary atmospheres and the tidal frequency. In this context, the state of
the art model proposed in the 60's by Lindzen and Chapman explains well the
properties of thermal tides in the asymptotic regime of Earth-like rapid
rotators but predicts a non-physical diverging tidal torque in the vicinity of
the spin-orbit synchronization. In this work, we present a new model that
addresses this issue by taking into account dissipative processes through a
Newtonian cooling. First, we recover the tidal torque recently obtained with
numerical simulations using General Circulation Models (GCM). Second, we show
that the tidal response is very sensitive to the atmospheric structure,
particularly to the stability with respect to convection. A strong stable
stratification is able to annihilate the atmospheric tidal torque, leading to
synchronization, while a convective atmosphere will be submitted to a strong
torque, leading to a non-synchronized rotation state.
