TY - JOUR

T1 - Carbon-grain Sublimation

T2 - A New Top-down Component of Protostellar Chemistry

AU - van 't Hoff, Merel L. R.

AU - Bergin, Edwin A.

AU - Jorgensen, Jes K.

AU - Blake, Geoffrey A.

PY - 2020/7/1

Y1 - 2020/7/1

N2 - Earth's carbon deficit has been an persistent problem in our understanding of the formation of our solar system. A possible solution would be the sublimation of carbon grains at the so-called soot line (similar to 300 K) early in the planet-formation process. Here, we argue that the most likely signatures of this process are an excess of hydrocarbons and nitriles inside the soot line, and a higher excitation temperature for these molecules compared to oxygen-bearing complex organics that desorb around the water snowline (similar to 100 K). Such characteristics have been reported in the literature, for example, in Orion KL, although not uniformly, potentially due to differences in the observational settings and analysis methods of different studies or the episodic nature of protostellar accretion. If this process is active, this would mean that there is a heretofore unknown component to the carbon chemistry during the protostellar phase that is acting from the top down-starting from the destruction of larger species-instead of from the bottom up from atoms. In the presence of such a top-down component, the origin of organic molecules needs to be re-explored.

AB - Earth's carbon deficit has been an persistent problem in our understanding of the formation of our solar system. A possible solution would be the sublimation of carbon grains at the so-called soot line (similar to 300 K) early in the planet-formation process. Here, we argue that the most likely signatures of this process are an excess of hydrocarbons and nitriles inside the soot line, and a higher excitation temperature for these molecules compared to oxygen-bearing complex organics that desorb around the water snowline (similar to 100 K). Such characteristics have been reported in the literature, for example, in Orion KL, although not uniformly, potentially due to differences in the observational settings and analysis methods of different studies or the episodic nature of protostellar accretion. If this process is active, this would mean that there is a heretofore unknown component to the carbon chemistry during the protostellar phase that is acting from the top down-starting from the destruction of larger species-instead of from the bottom up from atoms. In the presence of such a top-down component, the origin of organic molecules needs to be re-explored.

KW - Astrochemistry

KW - Protostars

KW - SPECTRAL-LINE SURVEY

KW - STAR-FORMING REGION

KW - POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC-HYDROCARBONS

KW - COMPLEX ORGANIC-MOLECULES

KW - HOT-CORE

KW - ORION-KL

KW - CHEMICAL DIFFERENTIATION

KW - SURFACE-CHEMISTRY

KW - GHZ

KW - ABUNDANCES

U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/ab9f97

DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/ab9f97

M3 - Letter

VL - 897

JO - The Astrophysical Journal Letters

JF - The Astrophysical Journal Letters

SN - 2041-8205

IS - 2

M1 - L38

ER -