Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(746), p. 97, 2012

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/746/1/97

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Characterizing CO Fourth Positive Emission in Young Circumstellar Disks

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

ABSTRACT Carbon monoxide is a commonly used IR/submillimeter tracer of gas in protoplanetary disks. We present an analysis of ultraviolet CO emission in Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Origins Spectrograph spectra for 12 Classical T Tauri stars (CTTSs). Several ro-vibrational bands of the CO A 1Π–X 1Σ+ (Fourth Positive) electronic transition system are spectrally resolved from emission of other atoms and H2. The CO A 1Π v′ = 14 state is populated by absorption of Lyα photons, created at the accretion column on the stellar surface. For targets with strong CO emission, we model the Lyα radiation field as an input for a simple fluorescence model to estimate CO rotational excitation temperatures and column densities. Typical column densities range from N CO = 1018 to 1019 cm−2. Our measured excitation temperatures are mostly below T CO = 600 K, cooler than typical M-band CO emission. These temperatures and the emission line widths imply that the UV emission originates in a different population of CO than that which is IR-emitting. We also find a significant correlation between CO emission and the disk accretion rate and age. Our analysis shows that ultraviolet CO emission can be a useful diagnostic of CTTS disk gas.