Keyte, Luke; Kama, Mihkel; Booth, Alice S.; Bergin, Edwin A.; Cleeves, L. Ilsedore; van Dishoeck, Ewine F.; Drozdovskaya, Maria N.; Furuya, Kenji; Rawlings, Jonathan; Shorttle, Oliver; Walsh, Catherine (2023). Azimuthal C/O variations in a planet-forming disk. Nature astronomy, 7(6), pp. 684-693. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/s41550-023-01951-9
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The elemental carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) in the atmosphere of a giant planet is a promising diagnostic of that planet’s formation history in a protoplanetary disk. Alongside efforts in the exoplanet community to measure the C/O ratio in planetary atmospheres, observational and theoretical studies of disks are increasingly focused on understanding how the gas-phase C/O ratio varies both with radial location and between disks. This is mostly tied to the icelines of major volatile carriers such as CO and H2O. Using ALMA observations of CS and SO, we have found evidence for an entirely unexpected type of C/O variation in the protoplanetary disk around HD 100546: an azimuthal variation from a typical, oxygen-dominated ratio (C/O ≈ 0.5) to a carbon-dominated ratio (C/O ≳ 1.0). We show that the spatial distribution and peculiar line kinematics of both CS and SO molecules can be well explained by azimuthal variations in the C/O ratio. We propose a shadowing mechanism that could lead to such a chemical dichotomy. Our results imply that tracing the formation history of giant exoplanets using their atmospheric C/O ratios will need to take into account time-dependent azimuthal C/O variations in a planet’s accretion zone.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Space Research and Planetary Sciences 08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute 10 Strategic Research Centers > Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) 08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > NCCR PlanetS |
UniBE Contributor: |
Drozdovskaya, Maria Nikolayevna |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 520 Astronomy 500 Science 500 Science > 530 Physics |
ISSN: |
2397-3366 |
Publisher: |
Nature Publishing Group |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Danielle Zemp |
Date Deposited: |
02 Apr 2024 14:55 |
Last Modified: |
02 Apr 2024 14:55 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1038/s41550-023-01951-9 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/194792 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/194792 |
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