Model for Atomic Oxygen Visible Line Emissions in Comet C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp

Abstract

We have recently developed a coupled chemistry-emission model for the green and red-doublet emissions of atomic oxygen on comet Hyakutake. In the present work we applied our model to comet Hale-Bopp, which had an order of magnitude higher H2O production rate than comet Hyakutake, to evaluate the photochemistry associated with the production and loss of O(1S) and O(1D) atoms and emission processes of green and red-doublet lines. We present the wavelength-dependent photo-attenuation rates for different photodissociation processes forming O(1S) and O(1D). The calculated radiative efficiency profiles of O(1S) and O(1D) atoms show that in comet Hale-Bopp the green and red-doublet emissions are emitted mostly above radial distances of 10^3 and 10^4 km, respectively. The model calculated [OI] 6300 A emission surface brightness and average intensity over the Fabry-P{é}rot spectrometer field of view are consistent with the observation of Morgenthaler et al. (2001), while the intensity ratio of green to red-doublet emission is in agreement with the observation of Zhang et al. (2001). In comet Hale-Bopp, for cometocentric distances less than 10^5 km, the intensity of [OI] 6300 A line is mainly governed by photodissociation of H2O. Beyond 10^5 km, O(1D) production is dominated by photodissociation of the water photochemical daughter product OH. Whereas the [OI] 5577 A emission line is controlled by photodissociation of both H2O and CO2. The calculated mean excess energy in various photodissociation processes show that the photodissociation of CO2 can produce O(1S) atoms with higher excess velocity compared to the photodissociation of H2O. Thus, our model calculations suggest that involvement of multiple sources in the formation of O(1S) could be a reason for the larger width of green line than that of red-doublet emission lines observed in several comets.

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