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Register a new userCO2 infrared emission as a diagnostic of planet-forming regions of disks
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[Abridged] The infrared ro-vibrational emission lines from organic molecules in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks are unique probes of the physical and chemical structure of planet forming regions and the processes that shape them. The non-LTE excitation effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) are studied in a full disk model to evaluate: (i) what the emitting regions of the different CO2 ro-vibrational bands are; (ii) how the CO2 abundance can be best traced using CO2 ro-vibrational lines using future JWST data and; (iii) what the excitation and abundances tell us about the inner disk physics and chemistry. CO2 is a major ice component and its abundance can potentially test models with migrating icy pebbles across the iceline. A full non-LTE CO2 excitation model has been built. The characteristics of the model are tested using non-LTE slab models. Subsequently the CO2 line formation has been modelled using a two-dimensional disk model representative of T-Tauri disks. The CO2 gas that emits in the 15 $mu$m and 4.5 $mu$m regions of the spectrum is not in LTE and arises in the upper layers of disks, pumped by infrared radiation. The v$_2$ 15 $mu$m feature is dominated by optically thick emission for most of the models that fit the observations and increases linearly with source luminosity. Its narrowness compared with that of other molecules stems from a combination of the low rotational excitation temperature (~250 K) and the inherently narrower feature for CO2. The inferred CO2 abundances derived for observed disks are more than two orders of magnitude lower than those in interstellar ices (~10$^5$), similar to earlier LTE disk estimates. Line-to-continuum ratios are low, of order a few %, thus high signal-to-noise (S/N > 300) observations are needed for individual line detections. Prospects of accurate abundance retreival with JWST-MIRI and JWST-NIRSpec are discussed.
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The evolution of protoplanetary disks is dominated by the conservation of angular momentum, where the accretion of material onto the central star is driven by viscous expansion of the outer disk or by disk winds extracting angular momentum without changing the disk size. Studying the time evolution of disk sizes allows us therefore to distinguish between viscous stresses or disk winds as the main mechanism of disk evolution. Observationally, estimates of the disk gaseous outer radius are based on the extent of the CO rotational emission, which, during the evolution, is also affected by the changing physical and chemical conditions in the disk. We use physical-chemical DALI models to study how the extent of the CO emission changes with time in a viscously expanding disk and investigate to what degree this observable gas outer radius is a suitable tracer of viscous spreading and whether current observations are consistent with viscous evolution. We find that the gas outer radius (R_co) measured from our models matches the expectations of a viscously spreading disk: R_co increases with time and for a given time R_co is larger for a disk with a higher viscosity alpha_visc. However, in the extreme case where the disk mass is low (less than 10^-4 Msun) and alpha_visc is high (larger than 10^-2), R_co will instead decrease with time as a result of CO photodissociation in the outer disk. For most disk ages R_co is up to 12x larger than the characteristic size R_c of the disk, and R_co/R_c is largest for the most massive disk. As a result of this difference, a simple conversion of R_co to alpha_visc will overestimate the true alpha_visc of the disk by up to an order of magnitude. We find that most observed gas outer radii in Lupus can be explained using a viscously evolving disk that starts out small (R_c = 10 AU) and has a low viscosity (alpha_visc = 10^-4 - 10^-3).
Both observations of arc-like structures and luminosity bursts of stars > 1 Myr in age indicate that at least some stars undergo late infall events. We investigate scenarios of replenishing the mass reservoir around a star via capturing and infalling events of cloudlets. We carry out altogether 24 three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of cloudlet encounters with a Herbig star of mass 2.5 solar mass using the moving mesh code AREPO. To account for the two possibilities of a star or a cloudlet traveling through the interstellar medium (ISM), we put either the star or the cloudlet at rest with respect to the background gas. For absent cooling in the adiabatic runs, almost none of the cloudlet gas is captured due to high thermal pressure. However, second-generation disks easily form when accounting for cooling of the gas. The disk radii range from several 100 au to about 1000 au and associated arc-like structures up to 10 000 au in length form around the star for runs with and without stellar irradiation. Consistent with angular momentum conservation, the arcs and disks are larger for larger impact parameters. Accounting for turbulence in the cloudlet only mildly changes the model outcome. In the case of the star being at rest with the background gas, the disk formation and mass replenishment process is more pronounced and the associated arc-shaped streamers are longer-lived. The results of our models confirm that late encounter events lead to the formation of transitional disks associated with arc-shaped structures such as observed for AB Aurigae or HD 100546. In addition, we find that second-generation disks and their associated filamentary arms are longer lived (>100 000 yrs) in infall events, when the star is at rest with the background gas.
UV photochemistry in the surface layers of protoplanetary disks dramatically alters their composition relative to previous stages of star formation. The abundance ratio CN/HCN has long been proposed to trace the UV field in various astrophysical objects, however to date the relationship between CN, HCN, and the UV field in disks remains ambiguous. As part of the ALMA Large Program MAPS (Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales), we present observations of CN N=1-0 transitions at 0.3 resolution towards five disk systems. All disks show bright CN emission within $sim$50-150 au, along with a diffuse emission shelf extending up to 600 au. In all sources we find that the CN/HCN column density ratio increases with disk radius from about unity to 100, likely tracing increased UV penetration that enhances selective HCN photodissociation in the outer disk. Additionally, multiple millimeter dust gaps and rings coincide with peaks and troughs, respectively, in the CN/HCN ratio, implying that some millimeter substructures are accompanied by changes to the UV penetration in more elevated disk layers. That the CN/HCN ratio is generally high (>1) points to a robust photochemistry shaping disk chemical compositions, and also means that CN is the dominant carrier of the prebiotically interesting nitrile group at most disk radii. We also find that the local column densities of CN and HCN are positively correlated despite emitting from vertically stratified disk regions, indicating that different disk layers are chemically linked. This paper is part of the MAPS special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
Far-infrared and (sub)millimeter fluxes can be used to study dust in protoplanetary disks, the building blocks of planets. Here, we combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory with ancillary data of 284 protoplanetary disks in the Taurus, Chamaeleon I, and Ophiuchus star-forming regions, covering from the optical to mm/cm wavelengths. We analyze their spectral indices as a function of wavelength and determine their (sub)millimeter slopes when possible. Most disks display observational evidence of grain growth, in agreement with previous studies. No correlation is found between other tracers of disk evolution and the millimeter spectral indices. A simple disk model is used to fit these sources, and we derive posterior distributions for the optical depth at 1.3 mm and 10 au, the disk temperature at this same radius, and the dust opacity spectral index. We find the fluxes at 70 microns to correlate strongly with disk temperatures at 10 au, as derived from these simple models. We find tentative evidence for spectral indices in Chamaeleon I being steeper than those of disks in Taurus/Ophiuchus, although more millimeter observations are needed to confirm this trend and identify its possible origin. Additionally, we determine the median spectral energy distribution of each region and find them to be similar across the entire wavelength range studied, possibly due to the large scatter in disk properties and morphologies.
This paper investigates the impact of the increased reaction rate constant due to tunneling effects on planet-forming disks. Our aim is to quantify the astrophysical implications of atom tunneling for simple molecules that are frequently used to infer disk structure information or to define the initial conditions for planet (atmosphere) formation. We explain the tunneling effect on reaction rates by using a scholarly example in comparison to previous UMIST2012 rate constants. In a chemical network with 1299 reactions, we identify all reactions that could show atom tunneling. We devise a simple formulation of reaction rate constants that overestimates tunneling and screen a standard T Tauri disk model for changes in species abundances. For those reactions found to be relevant, we find values of the most recent literature for the rate constants including tunneling and compare the resulting disk chemistry to the standard disk models. The rate constants in the UMIST2012 database in many cases already capture tunneling effects implicitly. A rigorous screening procedure identified three neutral-neutral reactions where atom tunneling could change simple molecule abundances. However, by adopting recent values of the rate constants of these reactions and due to the layered structure of planet-forming disks, the effects are limited to a small region where cold neutral-neutral chemistry dominates. Abundances of water close to the midplane snowline can increase by a factor of two at most compared to previous results with UMIST2012 rates. Observables from the disk surface, such as high excitation (> 500 K) water line fluxes, decrease by 60% at most when tunneling effects are explicitly excluded. On the other hand, disk midplane quantities relevant for planet formation such as the C-to-O ratio and also the ice-to-rock ratio are clearly affected by these gas-phase tunneling effects.
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