Chemical Imaging of the CO Snow Line in the HD 163296 Disk

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to locate the CO snow line in the HD 163296 disk, demonstrating that N2H+ is a reliable tracer and revealing differences in freeze-out temperatures compared to other disks.

Contribution

The paper identifies N2H+ as an effective chemical tracer for the CO snow line in protoplanetary disks, providing a new method to locate it accurately.

Findings

N2H+ ring indicates CO snow line at 90 AU.

CO freezes out at 25 K in HD 163296, higher than in TW Hya.

DCO+ emission does not directly trace the CO snow line.

Abstract

The condensation fronts (snow lines) of H2O, CO and other abundant volatiles in the midplane of a protoplanetary disk affect several aspects of planet formation. Locating the CO snow line, where the CO gas column density is expected to drop substantially, based solely on CO emission profiles is challenging. This has prompted an exploration of chemical signatures of CO freeze-out. We present ALMA Cycle 1 observations of the N2H+ J=3-2 and DCO+ J=4-3 emission lines toward the disk around the Herbig Ae star HD~163296 at ~0.5" (60 AU) resolution, and evaluate their utility as tracers of the CO snow line location. The N2H+ emission is distributed in a ring with an inner radius at 90 AU, corresponding to a midplane temperature of 25 K. This result is consistent with a new analysis of optically thin C18O data, which implies a sharp drop in CO abundance at 90 AU. Thus N2H+ appears to be a robust tracer of the midplane CO snow line. The DCO+ emission also has a ring morphology, but neither the inner nor the outer radius coincides with the CO snow line location of 90 AU, indicative of a complex relationship between DCO+ emission and CO freeze-out in the disk midplane. Compared to TW Hya, CO freezes out at a higher temperature in the disk around HD 163296 (25 vs. 17 K in the TW Hya disk), perhaps due to different ice compositions. This highlights the importance of actually measuring the CO snow line location, rather than assuming a constant CO freeze-out temperature for all disks.