Consistent dust and gas models for protoplanetary disks

I. Disk shape, dust settling, opacities, and PAHs

¹ SUPA, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, St. Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
e-mail: pw31@st-andrews.ac.uk
² UJF-Grenoble 1/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique (IPAG) UMR 5274, 38041 Grenoble, France
³ Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Postbus 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
⁴ Astronomical Institute “Anton Pannekoek”, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 94249, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands
⁵ University of Vienna, Department of Astrophysics, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria
⁶ UMI-FCA, CNRS/INSU France (UMI 3386), and Departamento de Astronomíca, Universidad de Chile, 1058 Santiago, Chile
⁷ Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Campus Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
⁸ Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstrasse, 85741 Garching, Germany
⁹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
¹⁰ INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, via della Scienza 5, 09047 Selargius (CA), Italy
¹¹ Konkoly Observatory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1121 Budapest, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15−17, Hungary
¹² Université de Toulouse, UPS-OMP, IRAP, 14 avenue É. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
¹³ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK

Received: 15 May 2015
Accepted: 4 November 2015

Abstract

We propose a set of standard assumptions for the modelling of Class II and III protoplanetary disks, which includes detailed continuum radiative transfer, thermo-chemical modelling of gas and ice, and line radiative transfer from optical to cm wavelengths. The first paper of this series focuses on the assumptions about the shape of the disk, the dust opacities, dust settling, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In particular, we propose new standard dust opacities for disk models, we present a simplified treatment of PAHs in radiative equilibrium which is sufficient to reproduce the PAH emission features, and we suggest using a simple yet physically justified treatment of dust settling. We roughly adjust parameters to obtain a model that predicts continuum and line observations that resemble typical multi-wavelength continuum and line observations of Class II T Tauri stars. We systematically study the impact of each model parameter (disk mass, disk extension and shape, dust settling, dust size and opacity, gas/dust ratio, etc.) on all mainstream continuum and line observables, in particular on the SED, mm-slope, continuum visibilities, and emission lines including [OI] 63 μm, high-J CO lines, (sub-)mm CO isotopologue lines, and CO fundamental ro-vibrational lines. We find that evolved dust properties, i.e. large grains, often needed to fit the SED, have important consequences for disk chemistry and heating/cooling balance, leading to stronger near- to far-IR emission lines in general. Strong dust settling and missing disk flaring have similar effects on continuum observations, but opposite effects on far-IR gas emission lines. PAH molecules can efficiently shield the gas from stellar UV radiation because of their strong absorption and negligible scattering opacities in comparison to evolved dust. The observable millimetre-slope of the SED can become significantly more gentle in the case of cold disk midplanes, which we find regularly in our T Tauri models. We propose to use line observations of robust chemical tracers of the gas, such as O, CO, and H₂, as additional constraints to determine a number of key properties of the disks, such as disk shape and mass, opacities, and the dust/gas ratio, by simultaneously fitting continuum and line observations.