Radiation thermo-chemical models of protoplanetary disks II. Line diagnostics

TL;DR

This paper models protoplanetary disks using radiative transfer and chemical calculations to identify far-IR line diagnostics, especially [CII] and [OI], for measuring disk mass and size.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive method combining disk modeling and line radiative transfer to interpret far-IR line emissions as disk mass and outer radius indicators.

Findings

[CII] 157.7 μm line originates in surface layers and depends on outer radius.

[OI] lines are bright and form in deeper, denser regions, with line ratios indicating disk mass.

Line ratios like [OI] 63.2 μm / 145.5 μm can serve as disk mass diagnostics.

Abstract

Methods. We use the recently developed disk code ProDiMo to calculate the physico-chemical structure of protoplanetary disks and apply the Monte-Carlo line radiative transfer code RATRAN to predict observable line profiles and fluxes. We consider a series of Herbig Ae type disk models ranging from 10^-6 M_Sun to 2.2 10^-2 M_Sun (between 0.5 and 700 AU) to discuss the dependency of the line fluxes and ratios on disk mass for otherwise fixed disk parameters. Results. We find the [CII] 157.7 mum line to originate in LTE from the surface layers of the disk, where Tg > Td . The total emission is dominated by surface area and hence depends strongly on disk outer radius. The [OI] lines can be very bright (> 10^-16 W/m^2) and form in slightly deeper and closer regions under non-LTE conditions. The high-excitation [OI] 145.5 mum line, which has a larger critical density, decreases more rapidly with disk mass than the 63.2 mum line. Therefore, the [OI] 63.2 mum/145.5 mum ratio is a promising disk mass indicator, especially as it is independent of disk outer radius for Rout > 200 AU. CO is abundant only in deeper layers A_V >~ 0.05. For too low disk masses (M_disk <~10^-4 M_Sun) the dust starts to become transparent, and CO is almost completely photo-dissociated. For masses larger than that the lines are an excellent independent tracer of disk outer radius and can break the outer radius degeneracy in the [OI] 63.2 mum/[CII]157.7 mum line ratio. Conclusions. The far-IR fine-structure lines of [CII] and [OI] observable with Herschel provide a promising tool to measure the disk gas mass, although they are mainly generated in the atomic surface layers. In spatially unresolved observations, none of these lines carry much information about the inner, possibly hot regions < 30 AU.