Depletion of gaseous CO in protoplanetary disks by surface-energy-regulated ice formation

Abstract

Empirical constraints of fundamental properties of protoplanetary disks are essential for understanding planet formation and planetary properties (1,2). Carbon monoxide (CO) gas is often used to constrain disk properties (3). However, estimates show that the CO gas abundance in disks is depleted relative to expected values (4,5,6,7), and models of various disk processes impacting the CO abundance could not explain this depletion on observed 1Myr timescales (8,9,10,11,12,13,14). Here we demonstrate that surface energy effects on particles in disks, such as the Kelvin effect, that arise when ice heterogeneously nucleates onto an existing particle can efficiently trap CO in its ice phase. In previous ice formation models, CO gas was released when small ice-coated particles were lofted to warmed disk layers. Our model can reproduce the observed abundance, distribution and time evolution of gaseous CO in the four most studied protoplanetary disks (7). We constrain the solid and gaseous CO inventory at the midplane and disk diffusivities and resolve inconsistencies in estimates of the disk mass -- three crucial parameters that control planetary formation.

Published in Nature Astronomy (2022), includes supplementary material

References in corpus (18)

• Detection of Carbon Monoxide and Water Absorption Lines in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
• The ancient heritage of water ice in the solar system
• A Three-Dimensional View of Turbulence: Constraints on Turbulent Motions in the HD 163296 Protoplanetary Disk using DCO${}^{+}$
• Chemical enrichment of giant planets and discs due to pebble drift
• Simultaneous Detection of Water, Methane and Carbon Monoxide in the Atmosphere of Exoplanet HR8799b
• Mass measurements in protoplanetary disks from hydrogen deuteride
• Measuring turbulent motion in planet-forming disks with ALMA: A detection around DM Tau and non-detections around MWC 480 and V4046 Sgr
• CO and dust properties in the TW Hya disk from high-resolution ALMA observations
• Mass inventory of the giant-planet formation zone in a solar nebula analog
• CO Depletion in Protoplanetary Disks: A Unified Picture Combining Physical Sequestration and Chemical Processing
• An ALMA Survey of H${}_2$CO in Protoplanetary Disks
• New Constraints From Dust Lines On The Surface Densities Of Protoplanetary Disks
• The TW Hya Rosetta Stone Project III: Resolving the Gaseous Thermal Profile of the Disk
• An evolutionary study of volatile chemistry in protoplanetary disks
• Turbulent-diffusion Mediated CO Depletion in Weakly Turbulent Protoplanetary disks
• Measuring protoplanetary disk gas surface density profiles with ALMA
• CO diffusion and desorption kinetics in CO${}_2$ ices
• Laboratory-based sticking coefficients for ices on a variety of small grains analogs

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Chemical Inventory of the Inner Regions of Planet-forming Disks -- The JWST/MINDS Program
• Fractal aggregates of sub-micron-sized grains in the young planet-forming disk around IM Lup
• Testing protoplanetary disc evolution with CO fluxes. A proof of concept in Lupus and Upper Sco
• Protoplanetary Disk Chemistry