Chemical evolution in planet-forming regions with growing grains

TL;DR

This study models the chemical evolution of ices on growing grains in protoplanetary disks, revealing how grain growth influences volatile compositions and suggesting simplified constant grain size models can approximate complex growth effects.

Contribution

It introduces a chemical evolution model incorporating dynamic grain growth, providing insights into volatile ice composition changes during planet formation.

Findings

Grain growth reduces ice-surface reactions, increasing H2O ice abundance.

Grain growth shifts dominant carbon carriers from CO to CO2 and CH4 in different disk regions.

Constant grain size models can effectively approximate evolving grain size impacts.

Abstract

[Abridged] Planets and their atmospheres are built from gas and solid material in protoplanetary disks. This solid material grows from smaller, micron-sized grains to larger sizes in the disks, during the process of planet formation. Our goal is to model the compositional evolution of volatile ices on grains of different sizes, assuming both time-dependent grain growth and several constant grain sizes. The state-of-the-art Walsh chemical kinetics code is utilised for modeling chemical evolution. This code has been upgraded to account for the time-evolving sizes of solids. Chemical evolution is modelled locally at four different radii in a protoplanetary disk midplane for up to 10Myr. The evolution is modelled for five different constant grain sizes, and one model where the grain size changes with time according to a grain growth model appropriate for the disk midplane. Local grain growth, with conservation of total grain mass and the assumption of spherical grains, acts to reduced the total grain-surface area that is available for ice-phase reactions. This reduces these reactions efficiency compared to a chemical scenario with a conventional grain-size choice of 0.1$\mu$m. The modelled chemical evolution with grain growth leads to increased abundances of H$_{2}$O ice. For carbon in the inner disk, grain growth leads CO gas to overtake CO$_{2}$ ice as dominant carrier, and in the outer disk, CH$_{4}$ ice to become the dominant carrier. Overall, a constant grain size adopted from a grain evolution model leads to almost identical chemical evolution, when compared with chemical evolution with evolving grain sizes. A constant grain size choice, albeit larger than 0.1$\mu$m, may therefore be an appropriate simplification when approximating the impact of grain growth on chemical evolution.