First detections of H13CO+ and HC15N in the disk around HD 97048: Evidence for a cold gas reservoir in the outer disk

TL;DR

This study reports the first detections of H13CO+ and HC15N molecules in the HD 97048 protoplanetary disk, revealing a cold gas reservoir in the outer disk and highlighting the importance of isotope chemistry in disk structure analysis.

Contribution

First detection of H13CO+ and HC15N in HD 97048, demonstrating the presence of cold gas and the need to consider isotope chemistry in disk modeling.

Findings

H13CO+ and HC15N show ringed sub-structure in emission.

HCO+/H13CO+ ratio is radially constant within uncertainties.

Evidence for a cold gas reservoir in the outer disk (T < 10K, R > 200au).

Abstract

Observations of different molecular lines in protoplanetary disks provide valuable information on the gas kinematics, as well as constraints on the radial density and temperature structure of the gas. With ALMA we have detected H13CO+ (J=4-3) and HC15N (J=4-3) in the HD97048 protoplanetary disk for the first time. We compare these new detections to the ringed continuum mm-dust emission and the spatially resolved CO (J=3-2) and HCO+ (J=4-3) emission. The radial distributions of the H13CO+ and HC15N emission show hints of ringed sub-structure whereas, the optically thick tracers, CO and HCO+, do not. We calculate the HCO+/H13CO+ intensity ratio across the disk and find that it is radially constant (within our uncertainties). We use a physio-chemical parametric disk structure of the HD97048 disk with an analytical prescription for the HCO+ abundance distribution to generate synthetic observations of the HCO+ and H13CO+ disk emission assuming LTE. The best by-eye fit models require radial variations in the HCO+/H13CO+ abundance ratio and an overall enhancement in H13CO+ relative to HCO+. This highlights the need to consider isotope selective chemistry and in particular low temperature carbon isotope exchange reactions. This also points to the presence of a reservoir of cold molecular gas in the outer disk (T < 10K, R > 200au). Chemical models are required to confirm that isotope-selective chemistry alone can explain the observations presented here. With these data, we cannot rule out that the known dust substructure in the HD97048 disk is responsible for the observed trends in molecular line emission, and higher spatial resolution observations are required to fully explore the potential of optically thin tracers to probe planet-carved dust gaps. We also report non-detections of H13CO+ and HC15N in the HD100546 protoplanetary disk.