Hunting for methanol in the water rich, planet forming disk around HL Tau
Alessandro Soave, Margot Leemker, Stefano Facchini, Luke Maud, Kazi Lucie Jessica Rygl, Leonardo Testi

TL;DR
This study searches for methanol in the HL Tau protoplanetary disk using ALMA data, finds no emission, and sets upper limits suggesting a lower methanol abundance compared to other objects.
Contribution
First stringent upper limits on methanol in HL Tau's disk, highlighting potential effects of dust opacity and chemical evolution differences.
Findings
No methanol emission detected in HL Tau disk.
Upper limits on methanol column density and methanol-to-water ratio established.
Methanol-to-water ratio in HL Tau is significantly lower than in other YSOs and comets.
Abstract
Methanol, the simplest complex organic molecule found in space, is considered a key compound necessary for the formation of chemical species of prebiotic interest. Methanol detections in protoplanetary disks remain scarce, even though it is frequently detected in the material surrounding other Young Stellar Objects. We investigate the presence of methanol in the protoplanetary disk around the HL Tau protostar, motivated by the detection of spatially resolved warm water emission. Given the similar volatility of methanol and water, thermally desorbed gas-phase methanol is expected to emit from the same region of the HL Tau disk where water vapour has been observed. Accordingly, we selected and imaged the most promising ALMA archival observations to search for rotational methanol lines. We found no methanol emission in the analysed archival datasets. Assuming optically thin emission and…
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