Time Variability of Molecular Line Emission in IRC +10216

Paper presented at the conference called Why Galaxies Care about AGB Stars III: a Closer Look in Space and Time, which was held in Vienna (Austria) between July 28th and August 1st, 2014
We present the results of monitoring the molecular emission of the C-rich AGB star IRC+10216 over 3 years with the Herschel Space Observatory. Observations of rotational transitions of various vibrational levels of CO, 13CO, CS, CCH, H2O, SiO, SiS, SiC2, HCN and HNC have been collected with the HIFI, PACS and SPIRE instruments over multiple epochs. The intensity monitoring shows strong and periodic variations of most of the observed molecules, often with differential behavior depending on the transition level (larger variation at higher J), and generally enhanced modulations in the vibrational modes of some of these molecules (e.g. HCN). These results show that the effect of IR pumping through the different vibrational levels on the emergent line profiles of a given transition can be really significant. This implies that the IR radiation field of the circumstellar envelope and its time variation has to be taken into account in any radiative transfer model in order to derive accurately the physico-chemical structure of the envelope.