FUV Irradiation and the Heat Signature of Accretion in Protoplanetary Disk Atmospheres

TL;DR

This study investigates how FUV irradiation and mechanical heating influence the thermal-chemical structure of protoplanetary disk atmospheres, proposing new diagnostics for detecting accretion processes like the magnetorotational instability.

Contribution

It demonstrates that FUV irradiation affects the upper molecular layer of disks and suggests that emission lines from cooler molecules can serve as diagnostics for accretion-related heating mechanisms.

Findings

FUV irradiation heats the upper molecular layer of disks.

Emission features match observed molecular signatures in disks.

Cooler molecular emissions could indicate mechanically-heated regions.

Abstract

Although stars accrete mass throughout the first few Myr of their lives, the physical mechanism that drives disk accretion in the T Tauri phase is uncertain, and diagnostics that probe the nature of disk accretion have been elusive, particularly in the planet formation region of the disk. Here we explore whether an accretion process such as the magnetorotational instability could be detected through its "heat signature", the energy it deposits in the disk atmosphere. To examine this possibility, we investigate the impact of accretion-related mechanical heating and energetic stellar irradiation (FUV and X-rays) on the thermal-chemical properties of disk atmospheres at planet formation distances. We find that stellar FUV irradiation (Lyman alpha and continuum), through its role in heating and photodissociation, affects much of the upper warm (400-2000 K) molecular layer of the atmosphere, and the properties of the layer are generally in good agreement with the observed molecular emission features of disks at UV, near-infrared, and mid-infrared wavelengths. At the same time, the effect of FUV irradiation is restricted to the upper molecular layer of the disk, even when irradiation by Ly alpha is included. The region immediately below the FUV-heated layer is potentially dominated by accretion-related mechanical heating. As cooler (90-400 K) CO, water, and other molecules are potential diagnostics of the mechanically-heated layer, emission line studies of these diagnostics might be used to search for evidence of the magnetorotational instability in action.