ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE CO SNOW LINE IN PROTOPLANETARY DISKS
- JILA, University of Colorado and NIST, UCB 440, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
CO is thought to be a vital building block for prebiotic molecules that are necessary for life. Thus, understanding where CO existed in a solid phase within the solar nebula is important for understanding the origin of life. We model the evolution of the CO snow line in a protoplanetary disk. We find that the current observed location of the CO snow line in our solar system, and in the solar system analog TW Hydra, cannot be explained by a fully turbulent disk model. With time-dependent disk models we find that the inclusion of a dead zone (a region of low turbulence) can resolve this problem. Furthermore, we obtain a fully analytic solution for the CO snow line radius for late disk evolutionary times. This will be useful for future observational attempts to characterize the demographics and predict the composition and habitability of exoplanets.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365989
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 783, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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