A chemical study of carbon fractionation in external galaxies

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how chemical processes affect the carbon isotope ratio in external galaxies, revealing that fractionation varies with physical conditions, time, and species, impacting interpretations of galactic nucleosynthesis.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of carbon isotope fractionation in external galaxies, highlighting the sensitivity to physical conditions and species differences.

Findings

Carbon fractionation is sensitive to physical conditions.

It varies strongly with time for most species.

Differences across species impact isotope ratio interpretations.

Abstract

In the interstellar medium carbon exists in the form of two stable isotopes $^{12}$C and $^{13}$C and their ratio is a good indicator of nucleosynthesis in galaxies. However, chemical fractionation can potentially significantly alter this ratio and in fact observations of carbon fractionation within the same galaxy has been found to vary from species to species. In this paper we theoretically investigate the carbon fractionation for selected abundant carbon-bearing species in order to determine the conditions that may lead to a spread of the $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C ratio in external galaxies. We find that carbon fractionation is sensitive to almost all the physical conditions we investigated, it strongly varies with time for all species but CO, and shows pronounced differences across species. Finally we discuss our theoretical results in the context of the few observations of the $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C ratio in both local and higher redshift galaxies.