Radiation thermo-chemical models of protoplanetary disks. Grain and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon charging

TL;DR

This study models the chemistry and physics of protoplanetary disks, focusing on grain and PAH charging, turbulence, and heating effects, to understand observational signatures of disk turbulence and the limitations of current observational methods.

Contribution

We developed a comprehensive physico-chemical model including PAH and grain charging, and estimated the turbulence parameter alpha_eff in protoplanetary disks, linking chemistry, magnetic effects, and observational signatures.

Findings

Inner disk has a dead-zone with minimal turbulence.

Disk heating varies with location, dominated by different processes.

CO line profiles are insensitive to turbulence effects.

Abstract

Context. Disks around pre-main-sequence stars evolve over time by turbulent viscous spreading. The main contender to explain the strength of the turbulence is the Magneto-Rotational-Instability (MRI) model, whose efficiency depends on the disk ionization fraction. Aims. We aim at computing self-consistently the chemistry including PAH charge chemistry, the grain charging and an estimate of an effective value of the turbulence alpha parameter in order to find observational signatures of disk turbulence. Methods. We introduced PAH and grain charging physics and their interplay with other gas-phase reactions in the physico-chemical code ProDiMo. Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics effects such as Ohmic and ambipolar diffusion are parametrized to derive an effective value for the turbulent parameter alpha_eff . We explored the effects of turbulence heating and line broadening on CO isotopologue sub-millimeter lines. Results. The spatial distribution of alpha_eff depends on various unconstrained disk parameters such as the magnetic parameter beta_mag or the cosmic ray density distribution inside the protoplanetary disks. The inner disk midplane shows the presence of the so-called dead-zone where the turbulence is quasi-inexistent. The disk is heated mostly by thermal accommodation on dust grains in the dead-zone, by viscous heating outside the dead-zone up to a few hundred astronomical units, and by chemical heating in the outer disk. The CO rotational lines probe the warm molecular disk layers where the turbulence is at its maximum. However, the effect of turbulence on the CO line profiles is minimal and difficult to distinguish from the thermal broadening. Conclusions. Viscous heating of the gas in the disk midplane outside the dead-zone is efficient. The determination of alpha from CO rotational line observations alone is challenging.