The effects of dust evolution on disks in the mid-IR

Abstract

In this paper, we couple together the dust evolution code two-pop-py with the thermochemical disk modelling code ProDiMo. We create a series of thermochemical disk models that simulate the evolution of dust over time from 0.018 Myr to 10 Myr, including the radial drift, growth, and settling of dust grains. We examine the effects of this dust evolution on the mid-infrared gas emission, focussing on the mid-infrared spectral lines of C2H2, CO2, HCN, NH3, OH, and H2O that are readily observable with Spitzer and the upcoming E-ELT and JWST. The addition of dust evolution acts to increase line fluxes by reducing the population of small dust grains. We find that the spectral lines of all species except C2H2 respond strongly to dust evolution, with line fluxes increasing by more than an order of magnitude across the model series as the density of small dust grains decreases over time. The C2H2 line fluxes are extremely low due to a lack of abundance in the infrared line-emitting regions, despite C2H2 being commonly detected with Spitzer, suggesting that warm chemistry in the inner disk may need further investigation. Finally, we find that the CO2 flux densities increase more rapidly than the other species as the dust disk evolves. This suggests that the flux ratios of CO2 to other species may be lower in disks with less-evolved dust populations.

13 pages, 9 figures, accepted in A&A

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• The diverse chemistry of protoplanetary disks as revealed by JWST
• The Chemical Inventory of the Inner Regions of Planet-forming Disks -- The JWST/MINDS Program
• On the settling of small grains in dusty discs: analysis and formulas
• Mid-infrared blends and continuum signatures of dust drift and accretion in protoplanetary disks