Molecular Gas Tracers in Young and Old Protoplanetary Disks
Abstract
Molecular emission is used to investigate both the physical and chemical properties of protoplanetary disks. Therefore, to accurately derive disk properties, we need a thorough understanding of the behavior of the molecular probes we rely on. Here we investigate how the molecular line emission of NH, HCO, HCN, and CO compare to other measured quantities in a set of 20 protoplanetary disks. Overall, we find positive correlations between multiple line fluxes and the disk dust mass and radius. We also generally find strong positive correlations between the line fluxes of different molecular species. However, some disks do show noticeable differences in the relative fluxes of NH, HCO, HCN, and CO. These differences occur even within a single star-forming region. This results in a potentially large range of different disk masses and chemical compositions for systems of similar age and birth environment. While we make preliminary comparisons of molecular fluxes across different star-forming regions, more complete and uniform samples are needed in the future to search for trends with birth environment or age.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2403.04715,
title = {Molecular Gas Tracers in Young and Old Protoplanetary Disks},
author = {Dana E. Anderson and L. Ilsedore Cleeves and Geoffrey A. Blake and Chunhua Qi and Edwin A. Bergin and John M. Carpenter and Kamber R. Schwarz and Claire Thilenius and Ke Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.04715},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal