Letter to the Editor

First detection of H₂S in a protoplanetary disk

The dense GG Tauri A ring

¹ Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, B18N, Allée Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 33615 Pessac, France
e-mail: thi-phuong.nguyen@u-bordeaux.fr
² Department of Astrophysics, Vietnam National Space Center, Vietnam Academy of Science and Techonology, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
³ Graduate University of Science and Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Techonology, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
⁴ IRAM, 300 rue de la piscine, 38406 Saint Martin d’Hères Cedex, France
⁵ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
⁶ Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, PO Box 23-141, Taipei 106, Taiwan
⁷ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346, USA

Received: 3 July 2018
Accepted: 27 July 2018

Abstract

Context. Studying molecular species in protoplanetary disks is very useful to characterize the properties of these objects, which are the site of planet formation.

Aims. We attempt to constrain the chemistry of S-bearing molecules in the cold parts of circumstellar disk of GG Tau A.

Methods. We searched for H₂S, CS, SO, and SO₂ in the dense disk around GG Tau A with the NOrthem Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) interferometer. We analyzed our data using the radiative transfer code DiskFit and the three-phase chemical model Nautilus.

Results. We detected H₂S emission from the dense and cold ring orbiting around GG Tau A. This is the first detection of H₂S in a protoplanetary disk. We also detected HCO⁺, H¹³CO⁺, and DCO⁺ in the disk. Upper limits for other molecules, CCS, SO₂, SO, HC₃N, and c-C₃H₂ are also obtained. The observed DCO⁺/HCO⁺ ratio is similar to those in other disks. The observed column densities, derived using our radiative transfer code DiskFit, are then compared with those from our chemical code Nautilus. The column densities are in reasonable agreement for DCO⁺, CS, CCS, and SO₂. For H₂S and SO, our predicted vertical integrated column densities are more than a factor of 10 higher than the measured values.

Conclusions. Our results reinforce the hypothesis that only a strong sulfur depletion may explain the low observed H₂S column density in the disk. The H₂S detection in GG Tau A is most likely linked to the much larger mass of this disk compared to that in other T Tauri systems.