The impact of cosmic-ray attenuation on the carbon cycle emission in molecular clouds

Abstract

Observations of the emission of the carbon cycle species (C, C+ CO) are commonly used to diagnose gas properties in the interstellar medium but are significantly sensitive to the cosmic-ray ionization rate. The carbon-cycle chemistry is known to be quite sensitive to the cosmic-ray ionization rate, $\zeta$, controlled by the flux of low-energy cosmic rays which get attenuated through molecular clouds. However, astrochemical models commonly assume a constant cosmic-ray ionization rate in the clouds. We investigate the effect of cosmic-ray attenuation on the emission of carbon cycle species from molecular clouds, in particular the [CII] 158 $\mu$m, [CI] 609 $\mu$m and CO (J = 1 - 0) 115.27 GHz lines. We use a post-processed chemical model of diffuse and dense simulated molecular clouds and quantify the variation in both column densities and velocity integrated line emission of the carbon cycle with different cosmic-ray ionization rate models. We find that the abundances and column densities of carbon cycle species is significantly impacted by the chosen cosmic-ray ionization rate model: no single constant ionization rate can reproduce the abundances modelled with an attenuated cosmic-ray model. Further, we show that constant ionization rate models fail to simultaneously reproduce the integrated emission of the lines we consider, and their deviations from a physically derived cosmic-ray attenuation model is too complex to be simply corrected. We demonstrate that the two clouds we model exhibit a similar average $A_{\mathrm{V},\mathrm{eff}}$ -- $n_{\mathrm{H}}$ relationship, resulting in an average relation between the cosmic-ray ionization rate and density $\zeta (n_{\mathrm{H}})$. We conclude by providing a number of implementation recommendations for CRs in astrochemical models, but emphasize the necessity for column-dependent cosmic-ray ionization rate prescriptions.

Accepted to A&A. Major results in Figures 4, 6, 10, 13

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