Chemistry in Disks. III. -- Photochemistry and X-ray driven chemistry probed by the ethynyl radical (CCH) in DM Tau, LkCa 15, and MWC 480

TL;DR

This study investigates the photochemistry and X-ray driven chemistry in circumstellar disks around different star types by mapping CCH molecules, comparing observations with chemical models, and highlighting CCH as a tracer of irradiation effects.

Contribution

It provides new observational data on CCH in disks around Herbig and T Tauri stars and evaluates the effectiveness of chemical models in predicting CCH distributions and excitation conditions.

Findings

CCH detected and mapped in three disks with low excitation temperatures.

Models predict radial CCH variations but underestimate actual column densities.

CCH is a sensitive tracer of UV and X-ray irradiation in disks.

Abstract

We studied several representative circumstellar disks surrounding the Herbig Ae star MWC 480 and the T Tauri stars LkCa 15 and DM Tau at (sub-)millimeter wavelengths in lines of CCH. Our aim is to characterize photochemistry in the heavily UV-irradiated MWC 480 disk and compare the results to the disks around cooler T Tauri stars. We detected and mapped CCH in these disks with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferome- ter in the C- and D-configurations in the (1-0) and (2-1) transitions. Using an iterative minimization technique, the CCH column densities and excitation conditions are con- strained. Very low excitation temperatures are derived for the T Tauri stars. These values are compared with the results of advanced chemical modeling, which is based on a steady-state flared disk structure with a vertical temperature gradient, and a gas- grain chemical network with surface reactions. Both model and observations suggest that CCH is a sensitive tracer of the X-ray and UV irradiation. The predicted radial dependency and source to source variations of CCH column densities qualitatively agree with the observed values, but the predicted column densities are too low by a factor of several. The chemical model fails to reproduce high concentrations of CCH in very cold disk midplane as derived from the observed low excitation condition for both the (1-0) and (2-1) transitions.