Tracking the evolutionary stage of protostars by the abundances of astrophysical ices

Abstract

The physical evolution of Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) is accompanied by an enrichment of the molecular complexity, mainly triggered by the heating and energetic processing of the astrophysical ices. In this paper, a study of how the ice column density varies across the protostellar evolution has been performed. Tabulated data of H${}_2$O, CO${}_2$, CH${}_3$OH, HCOOH observed by ground- and space-based telescopes toward 27 early-stage YSOs were taken from the literature. The observational data shows that ice column density and spectral index ($\alpha$), used to classify the evolutionary stage, are well correlated. A 2D continuum radiative transfer simulation containing bare and grains covered by ices at different levels of cosmic-ray processing were used to calculate the Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) in different angle inclinations between face-on and edge-on configuration. The H${}_2$O:CO${}_2$ ice mixture was used to address the H${}_2$O and CO${}_2$ column density variation whereas the CH${}_3$OH and HCOOH are a byproduct of the virgin ice after the energetic processing. The simulated spectra were used to calculate the ice column densities of YSOs in an evolutionary sequence. As a result, the models show that the ice column density variation of HCOOH with $\alpha$ can be justified by the envelope dissipation and ice energetic processing. On the other hand, the ice column densities are mostly overestimated in the cases of H${}_2$O, CO${}_2$ and CH${}_3$OH, even though the physical and cosmic-ray processing effects are taken into account.

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 29 pages, 16 figures

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