Different degrees of nitrogen and carbon depletion in the warm molecular layers of protoplanetary disks

TL;DR

This study models the chemical evolution of nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen in protoplanetary disks, revealing differential depletion patterns driven by dust dynamics and ice chemistry, with nitrogen less depleted than carbon and oxygen.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive 1D model incorporating dust settling, turbulent diffusion, and gas-ice chemistry to explain elemental depletion in disks.

Findings

Gaseous CO is converted to CO2 ice and locked near the midplane.

N2 remains less processed and less depleted than CO and CO2.

Nitrogen depletion occurs mainly through the vertical cold finger effect, leading to higher N than C and O.

Abstract

Observations have revealed that the elemental abundances of carbon and oxygen in the warm molecular layers of some protoplanetary disks are depleted compared to those is the interstellar medium by a factor of ~10-100. Meanwhile, little is known about nitrogen. To investigate the time evolution of nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen elemental abundances in disks, we develop a one-dimensional model that incorporates dust settling, turbulent diffusion of dust and ices, as well as gas-ice chemistry including the chemistry driven by stellar UV/X-rays and the galactic cosmic rays. We find that gaseous CO in the warm molecular layer is converted to CO2 ice and locked up near the midplane via the combination of turbulent mixing (i.e., the vertical cold finger effect) and ice chemistry driven by stellar UV photons. On the other hand, gaseous N2, the main nitrogen reservoir in the warm molecular layer, is less processed by ice chemistry, and exists as it is. Then the nitrogen depletion occurs solely by the vertical cold finger effect of N2. As the binding energy of N2 is lower than that of CO and CO2, the degree of nitrogen depletion is smaller than that of carbon and oxygen depletion, leading to higher elemental abundance of nitrogen than that of carbon and oxygen. This evolution occurs within 1 Myr and proceeds further, when the $\alpha$ parameter for the diffusion coefficient is ~0.001. Consequently, the N2H+/CO column density ratio increases with time. How the vertical transport affects the midplane ice composition is briefly discussed.