The Effects of Protostellar Disk Turbulence on CO Emission Lines: A Comparison Study of Disks with Constant CO Abundance vs. Chemically Evolving Disks

TL;DR

This study investigates how chemical depletion of CO in protoplanetary disks affects turbulence measurements derived from CO emission lines, revealing that neglecting depletion can underestimate turbulence speeds.

Contribution

It demonstrates that CO depletion significantly impacts turbulence diagnostics from emission lines, highlighting the need to consider chemical evolution in such analyses.

Findings

CO depletion alters peak-to-trough line ratios over time.

Ignoring CO depletion can underestimate turbulence speeds by at least 0.2 km/s.

Chemical effects can mimic turbulence signatures, complicating interpretations.

Abstract

Turbulence is the leading candidate for angular momentum transport in protoplanetary disks and therefore influences disk lifetimes and planet formation timescales. However, the turbulent properties of protoplanetary disks are poorly constrained observationally. Recent studies have found turbulent speeds smaller than what fully-developed MRI would produce (Flaherty et al. 2015, 2017). However, existing studies assumed a constant CO/H2 ratio of 0.0001 in locations where CO is not frozen-out or photo-dissociated. Our previous studies of evolving disk chemistry indicate that CO is depleted by incorporation into complex organic molecules well inside the freeze-out radius of CO. We consider the effects of this chemical depletion on measurements of turbulence. Simon et al. (2015) suggested that the ratio of the peak line flux to the flux at line center of the CO J=3-2 transition is a reasonable diagnostic of turbulence, so we focus on that metric, while adding some analysis of the more complex effects on spatial distribution. We simulate the emission lines of CO based on chemical evolution models presented in Yu et al. (2016), and find that the peak-to-trough ratio changes as a function of time as CO is destroyed. Specifically, a CO-depleted disk with high turbulent velocity mimics the peak-to-trough ratios of a non-CO-depleted disk with lower turbulent velocity. We suggest that disk observers and modelers take into account the possibility of CO depletion when using line peak-to-trough ratios to constrain the degree of turbulence in disks. Assuming that CO/H2 = 0.0001 at all disk radii can lead to underestimates of turbulent speeds in the disk by at least 0.2 km/s.