Unlocking CO Depletion in Protoplanetary Disks I. The Warm Molecular Layer

TL;DR

This study systematically investigates the physical conditions leading to CO depletion in protoplanetary disks' warm molecular layer, revealing the roles of cosmic rays and initial water abundance in chemical processing.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the chemical mechanisms and physical conditions that influence CO depletion in protoplanetary disks, highlighting the limited role of chemistry alone.

Findings

CO abundance in outer disks often below 10^-4 after 1 Myr

High cosmic ray rates are necessary for significant CO depletion inside snow lines

Chemical processing alone cannot fully explain observed low CO abundances

Abstract

CO is commonly used as a tracer of the total gas mass in both the interstellar medium and in protoplanetary disks. Recently there has been much debate about the utility of CO as a mass tracer in disks. Observations of CO in protoplanetary disks reveal a range of CO abundances, with measurements of low CO to dust mass ratios in numerous systems. One possibility is that carbon is removed from CO via chemistry. However, the full range of physical conditions conducive to this chemical reprocessing is not well understood. We perform a systematic survey of the time dependent chemistry in protoplanetary disks for 198 models with a range of physical conditions. We varying dust grain size distribution, temperature, comic ray and X-ray ionization rate, disk mass, and initial water abundance, detailing what physical conditions are necessary to activate the various CO depletion mechanisms in the warm molecular layer. We focus our analysis on the warm molecular layer in two regions: the outer disk (100 au) well outside the CO snowline and the inner disk (19 au) just inside the midplane CO snow line. After 1 Myr, we find that the majority of models have a CO abundance relative to H$_2$ less than $10^{-4}$ in the outer disk, while an abundance less than $10^{-5}$ requires the presence of cosmic rays. Inside the CO snow line, significant depletion of CO only occurs in models with a high cosmic ray rate. If cosmic rays are not present in young disks it is difficult to chemically remove carbon from CO. Additionally, removing water prior to CO depletion impedes the chemical processing of CO. Chemical processing alone cannot explain current observations of low CO abundances. Other mechanisms must also be involved.