On The Photodesorption of CO Ice Analogues: The Formation of Atomic C in The Ice and the Effect of The VUV Emission Spectrume
arXiv:2001.01590 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab06be
Abstract
CO ice has a phase transition at 35 K when its structure changes from amorphous to crystalline. Using Reflection absorption Infrared Spectroscopy (RAIRS), Ãberg et al. observed that the photodesorption yield of CO ice deposited at 60 K and irradiated at 18 K is 40% lower than that of CO ice deposited and irradiated at 18 K. In this work, CO ices were deposited at 16-60 K and UV-irradiated at 16 K to rule out the temperature effect and figure out the relationship between photodesorption yield and ice structure. IR spectroscopy is a common method used for measurement of the photodesorption yield in ices. We found that undetectable C atoms produced in irradiated CO ice can account for 33% of the amount of depleted CO molecules in the ice. A quantitative calibration of QMS was therefore performed to convert the measured ion current into photodesorption yield. During various irradiation periods, the dominant photodesorbing species were CO, O, and CO, and their photodesorption yields in CO ices deposited at different temperature configurations were almost the same, indicating that ice morphology has no effect on the photodesorption yield of CO ice. In addition, we found that the lower desorption yield reported by MartÃn-Doménech et al. is due to a linear relationship between the photodesorption yield and the combination of energy distribution of Microwave-Discharge Hydrogen-flow Lamp (MDHL) and UV absorption cross section of ices.
11 pages, 11 figures