Influence of the C/O ratio on titanium and vanadium oxides in protoplanetary disks

¹ Université de Franche-Comté, Institut UTINAM, CNRS/INSU, UMR 6213, Besançon Cedex, France
e-mail: mdib@obs-besancon.fr
² Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universitá di Roma Tor Vergata, via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy
³ Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Space Sciences Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
⁴ Department of Physics and Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA

Received: 26 April 2013
Accepted: 12 November 2013

Abstract

Context. The observation of carbon-rich disks have motivated several studies questioning the influence of the C/O ratio on their gas phase composition in order to establish the connection between the metallicity of hot-Jupiters and that of their parent stars.

Aims. We propose a method that allows the characterization of the adopted C/O ratio in protoplanetary disks independently from the determination of the host star composition. Titanium and vanadium chemistries are investigated because they are strong optical absorbers and also because their oxides are known to be sensitive to the C/O ratio in some exoplanet atmospheres.

Methods. We use a commercial package based on the Gibbs energy minimization technique to compute the titanium and vanadium equilibrium chemistries in protoplanetary disks for C/O ratios ranging from 0.05 to 10. Our calculations are performed for pressures in the 10^-6–10^-2 bar domain, and for temperatures ranging from 50 K to 2000 K.

Results. We find that the vanadium nitride/vanadium oxide and titanium hydride/titanium oxide gas phase ratios strongly depend on the C/O ratio in the hot parts of disks (T ≥ 1000 K). Our calculations suggest that, in these regions, these ratios can be used as tracers of the C/O value in protoplanetary disks.