Ionization chemistry in the inner disc: a combined treatment of ionic and thermionic emission and arbitrary grain size distributions

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive chemical network model for the inner protoplanetary disc that includes ionic and thermionic emission with arbitrary grain size distributions, improving accuracy in predicting grain charging and disc viscosity.

Contribution

It introduces a general chemical network with a numerical solution method that accounts for grain size distributions and ionic/thermionic emission, advancing previous simplified models.

Findings

Grain size distribution significantly affects grain charging.

Using an effective dust-to-gas ratio can lead to inaccuracies.

Grain charging impacts collisional time-scales and disc viscosity.

Abstract

In the inner regions of protoplanetary discs, ionization chemistry controls the fluid viscosity, and is thus key to understanding various accretion, outflow and planet formation processes. The ionization is driven by thermal and non-thermal processes in the gas-phase, as well as by dust-gas interactions that lead to grain charging and ionic and thermionic emission from grain surfaces. The latter dust-gas interactions are moreover a strong function of the grain size distribution. However, analyses of chemical networks that include ionic/thermionic emission have so far only considered grains of a single size (or only approximately treated the effects of a size distribution), while analyses that include a distribution of grain sizes have ignored ionic/thermionic emission. Here, we: (1) investigate a general chemical network, widely applicable in inner disc regions, that includes gas-phase reactions, ionic and thermionic emission, and an arbitrary grain size distribution; (2) present a numerical method to solve this network in equilibrium; and (3) elucidate a general method to estimate the chemical time-scale. We show that: (a) approximating a grain size distribution by an "effective dust-to-gas ratio" (as done in previous work) can predict significantly inaccurate grain charges; and (b) grain charging significantly alters grain collisional time-scales in the inner disc. For conditions generally found in the inner disc, this work facilitates: (i) calculation of fluid resistivities and viscosity; and (ii) inclusion of the effect of grain charging on grain fragmentation and coagulation (a critical effect that is often ignored).