Detection of DCO+ in a circumstellar disk

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0301571

From: Ewine F. van Dishoeck <ewine@strw.leidenuniv.nl>

Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 11:54:00 GMT   (30kb)

Authors:
E.F. van Dishoeck,
W.F. Thi,
G.J. van Zadelhoff

Comments: Accepted by A&A Letters; 4 pages, 1 figure

We report the first detection of DCO+ in a circumstellar disk. The DCO+ J=5-4
line at 360.169 GHz is observed with the 15m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in
the disk around the pre-main sequence star TW Hya. Together with measurements
of the HCO+ and H13CO+ J=4-3 lines, this allows an accurate determination of
the DCO+/HCO+ ratio in this disk. The inferred value of 0.035+-0.015 is close
to that found in cold pre-stellar cores and is somewhat higher than that
measured in the envelope around the low-mass protostar IRAS 16293 -2422. It is
also close to the DCN/HCN ratio obtained for pristine cometary material in the
jet of comet Hale-Bopp. The observed DCO+/HCO+ ratio for TW Hya is consistent
with theoretical models of disks which consider gas-phase fractionation
processes within a realistic 2-D temperature distribution and which include the
effects of freeze-out onto grains.

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