Issue |
A&A
Volume 685, May 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A77 | |
Number of page(s) | 28 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348465 | |
Published online | 14 May 2024 |
PDRs4All
VI. Probing the photochemical evolution of PAHs in the Orion Bar using machine learning techniques
1
Department of Physics & Astronomy, The University of Western Ontario,
London
ON
N6A 3K7, Canada
e-mail: epeeters@uwo.ca
2
Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, The University of Western Ontario,
London
ON
N6A 3K7, Canada
3
Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute,
339 Bernardo Avenue, Suite 200,
Mountain View,
CA
94043, USA
4
Leiden Observatory, Leiden University,
P.O. Box 9513,
2300 RA
Leiden, The Netherlands
5
Astronomy Department, University of Maryland,
College Park,
MD
20742, USA
6
Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan,
1085 South University Avenue,
Ann Arbor,
MI
48109, USA
7
Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, CNRS, CNES,
9 Av. du colonel Roche,
31028
Toulouse Cedex 04, France
8
Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS,
Bâtiment 121,
91405
Orsay Cedex, France
9
Space Telescope Science Institute,
3700 San Martin Drive,
Baltimore,
MD
21218, USA
10
NASA Ames Research Center,
MS 245-6,
Moffett Field,
CA
94035-1000, USA
11
Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d’Orsay, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS,
Bâtiment 520,
91405
Orsay Cedex, France
12
Department of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo
113-0033, Japan
13
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
14
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University,
Houston TX
77005-1892, USA
15
IPAC, California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, CA, USA
16
Laboratory Astrophysics Group of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Institute of Solid State Physics,
Helmholtzweg 3,
07743
Jena, Germany
17
Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande,
96201-900,
Rio Grande, RS, Brazil
18
School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-sen University,
2 Da Xue Road, Tangjia, Zhuhai
519000,
Guangdong Province, PR China
19
ACRI-ST, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche de Grasse (CERGA),
10 Av. Nicolas Copernic,
06130
Grasse, France
20
INCLASS Common Laboratory.,
10 Av. Nicolas Copernic,
06130
Grasse, France
Received:
2
November
2023
Accepted:
23
December
2023
Context. Extraordinary observations of the Orion Bar by JWST have shown, for the first time, the incredible richness of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission bands and their variation on very small scales. These variations are the result of photochemical evolution of the PAH carrier.
Aims. We aim to probe the photochemical evolution of PAHs across the key zones of the ideal photodissociation region (PDR) that is the Orion Bar using unsupervised machine learning.
Methods. We used JWST NIRSpec IFU and MIRI MRS observations of the Orion Bar from the JWST Early Release Science programme PDRs4All (ID: 1288). We levered bisecting k-means clustering to generate highly detailed spatial maps of the spectral variability in the 3.2–3.6, 5.95–6.6, 7.25–8.95, and 10.9–11.63 μm wavelength regions. We analysed and subsequently described the variations in the cluster profiles and connected them to the conditions of the physical locations from which they arise. We interpreted the origin of the observed variations with respect to the following key zones: the H II region, the atomic PDR zone, and the layers of the molecular PDR zone stratified by the first, second, and third dissociation fronts (DF 1, DF 2, and DF 3, respectively).
Results. Observed PAH emission exhibits spectral variation that is highly dependent on the spatial position in the PDR. We find the 8.6 μm band to behave differently than all other bands, which vary systematically with one another. Notably, we find a uniform variation in the 3.4–3.6 μm bands and 3.4/3.3 intensity ratio. We attribute the carrier of the 3.4–3.6 μm bands to a single side group attached to very similarly sized PAHs. Further, cluster profiles reveal a transition between characteristic profile classes of the 11.2 μm feature from the atomic to the molecular PDR zones. We find the carriers of each of the profile classes to be independent, and reason the latter to be PAH clusters existing solely deep in the molecular PDR. Clustering also reveals a connection between the 11 .2 and 6.2 μm bands and that clusters generated from variation in the 10.9–11.63 μm region can be used to recover those in the 5.95–6.6 μm region.
Conclusions. Clustering is a powerful and comprehensive tool for characterising PAH spectral variability on both spatial and spectral scales. For individual bands as well as global spectral behaviours, we find ultraviolet processing to be the most important driver of the evolution of PAHs and their spectral signatures in the Orion Bar PDR.
Key words: astrochemistry / techniques: spectroscopic / ISM: molecules / photon-dominated region (PDR) / infrared: ISM / ISM: individual objects: Orion Bar
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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