Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userThe role of atom tunneling in gas-phase reactions in planet-forming disks
90
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
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.
rate research
Read More
Nitrogen chemistry in protoplanetary disks and the freeze-out on dust particles is key to understand the formation of nitrogen bearing species in early solar system analogs. So far, ammonia has not been detected beyond the snowline in protoplanetary disks. We aim to find gas-phase ammonia in a protoplanetary disk and characterize its abundance with respect to water vapor. Using HIFI on the Herschel Space Observatory we detect, for the first time, the ground-state rotational emission of ortho-NH$_3$ in a protoplanetary disk, around TW Hya. We use detailed models of the disks physical structure and the chemistry of ammonia and water to infer the amounts of gas-phase molecules of these species. We explore two radial distributions ( confined to $<$60 au like the millimeter-sized grains) and two vertical distributions (near the midplane where water is expected to photodesorb off icy grains) to describe the (unknown) location of the molecules. These distributions capture the effects of radial drift and vertical settling of ice-covered grains. We use physical-chemical models to reproduce the fluxes with assuming that water and ammonia are co-spatial. We infer ammonia gas-phase masses of 0.7-11.0 $times$10$^{21}$ g. For water, we infer gas-phase masses of 0.2-16.0 $times$10$^{22}$ g. This corresponds to NH$_3$/H$_2$O abundance ratios of 7%-84%, assuming that water and ammonia are co-located. Only in the most compact and settled adopted configuration is the inferred NH$_3$/H$_2$O consistent with interstellar ices and solar system bodies of $sim$ 5%-10%. Volatile release in the midplane may occur via collisions between icy bodies if the available surface for subsequent freeze-out is significantly reduced, e.g., through growth of small grains into pebbles or larger.
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).
[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.
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.
Spatially resolved continuum observations of planet-forming disks show prominent ring and gap structures in their dust distribution. However, the picture from gas observations is much less clear and constraints on the radial gas density structure (i.e. gas gaps) remain rare and uncertain. We want to investigate the importance of thermo-chemical processes for the interpretation of high-spatial-resolution gas observations of planet-forming disks and their impact on derived gas properties. We apply the radiation thermo-chemical disk code ProDiMo (PROtoplanetary DIsk MOdel) to model self-consistently the dust and gas disk of HD 163296, using the DSHARP gas and dust observations. With this model we investigate the impact of dust gaps and gas gaps, considering chemistry and heating/cooling processes, on the observables and the derived gas properties. We find distinct peaks in the radial line intensity profiles of the CO line data of HD 163296 at the location of the dust gaps. Our model indicates that those peaks are not only a consequence of a gas temperature increase within the gaps but are mainly caused by the absorption of line emission from the back side of the disk by the dust rings. For two of the three prominent dust gaps in HD 163296, we find that thermo-chemical effects are negligible for deriving density gradients via measurements of the rotation velocity. However, for the gap with the highest dust depletion, the temperature gradient can be dominant and needs to be considered to derive accurate gas density profiles. Self-consistent gas and dust thermo-chemical modelling in combination with high-quality observations of multiple molecules are necessary to accurately derive gas gap depths and shapes. This is crucial to determine the origin of gaps and rings in planet-forming disks and to improve the mass estimates of forming planets if they are the cause of the gap.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
