Search

Infrared spectroscopy, e.g., with JWST, provides a glimpse into the chemical inventory of the innermost region of protoplanetary discs, where terrestrial planets eventually form. The chemical make-up of regions inside snowlines is connected to the material drifting from the outer regions, which can be modeled with dust evolution models. However, infrared observations are limited by the high dust extinction in the inner disc, and only probes the abundances of gaseous species in the disc surface layers. As a result, the bulk mass of delivered volatiles is not directly relatable to what is measured through infrared spectra. In this paper, we investigate how the delivery of dust and ice after prolonged pebble drift affects the observable reservoir of water vapor in the inner disc. We develop a 1+1D approach based on dust evolution models to determine the delivery and distribution of vapor compared to the height of the $\tau = 1$ surface in the dust continuum. We find that the observable column density of water vapor at wavelengths probed by JWST spans many orders of magnitude over time, exhibiting different radial profiles depending on dust properties, drift rate, and local processing. In the presence of a traffic-jam effect inside the snowline, the observable vapor reservoir appears constant in time despite the ongoing delivery by pebble drift, such that water is effectively smuggled unnoticed. Differences in measured column densities then originate not only from variations in bulk vapor content, but also from differences in the properties and distribution of dust particles., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted in MNRAS

The architecture and composition of planetary systems are thought to be strongly influenced by the transport and delivery of dust and volatiles via ices on pebbles during the planet formation phase in protoplanetary discs. Understanding these transport mechanisms is crucial in building a comprehensive picture of planet formation, including material and chemical budget; constraining the birth properties of these discs is a key step in this process. We present a novel method of retrieving such properties by studying the transport of icy pebbles in the context of an observed gas-phase CO enhancement within the CO snowline in the protoplanetary disc around HD 163296. We combine Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling with a fast model of radial drift to determine the birth gas mass and characteristic radius of the disc, and compare our results against observations and models in the literature; we find the birth-condition disc gas mass to be $\log_{10}(M_{\rm{disc}}/M_{\odot})=-0.64^{+0.19}_{-0.24}$ and the characteristic radius to be $\log_{10}(r_{\rm{c}}/\rm{AU})=2.30^{+0.45}_{-0.46}$. We additionally determine that dust grains must be `fragile' ($v_{f}=100~\mathrm{cms}^{-1}$) to retain enough dust to match current dust mass observations, with our lowest fragmentation velocity model providing a current-age dust mass of $\rm{M_{dust}}=662^{+518}_{-278} \rm{M_{\oplus}}$ based on the retrieved birth conditions. Using our retrieved birth conditions, we extend our simulations to mass of material reaching the water snowline in the inner disc, where terrestrial and super-Earth planets may be forming, and speculate on the nature of these exoplanets., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present a JWST MIRI/MRS spectrum of the inner disk of WISE J044634.16$-$262756.1B (hereafter J0446B), an old ($\sim$34 Myr) M4.5 star but with hints of ongoing accretion. The spectrum is molecule-rich and dominated by hydrocarbons. We detect 14 molecular species (H$_2$, CH$_3$, CH$_4$, C$_2$H$_2$, $^{13}$CCH$_2$, C$_2$H$_4$, C$_2$H$_6$, C$_3$H$_4$, C$_4$H$_2$, C$_6$H$_6$, HCN, HC$_3$N, CO$_2$ and $^{13}$CO$_2$) and 2 atomic lines ([Ne II] and [Ar II]), all observed for the first time in a disk at this age. The detection of spatially unresolved H$_2$ and Ne gas strongly supports that J0446B hosts a long-lived primordial disk, rather than a debris disk. The marginal H$_2$O detection and the high C$_2$H$_2$/CO$_2$ column density ratio indicate that the inner disk of J0446B has a very carbon-rich chemistry, with a gas-phase C/O ratio $\gtrsim$2, consistent with what have been found in most primordial disks around similarly low-mass stars. In the absence of significant outer disk dust substructures, inner disks are expected to first become water-rich due to the rapid inward drift of icy pebbles, and evolve into carbon-rich as outer disk gas flows inward on longer timescales. The faint millimeter emission in such low-mass star disks implies that they may have depleted their outer icy pebble reservoir early and already passed the water-rich phase. Models with pebble drift and volatile transport suggest that maintaining a carbon-rich chemistry for tens of Myr likely requires a slowly evolving disk with $\alpha-$viscosity $\lesssim10^{-4}$. This study represents the first detailed characterization of disk gas at $\sim$30 Myr, strongly motivating further studies into the final stages of disk evolution., Comment: Accepted by ApJL. 8 figures in the main text