The effect of dilution on the energy dissipation in water interstellar ice analogues

Probed by infrared irradiation

¹ HFML-FELIX laboratory, IMM, Radboud University, Toernooiveld 7, 6525 ED Nijmegen, The Netherlands
² Institute of Molecules and Materials (IMM), Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands
³ Centre for Interstellar Catalysis (InterCat), Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, Aarhus 8000, Denmark

^★ Corresponding author; h.cuppen@science.ru.nl

Received: 12 July 2024
Accepted: 12 September 2024

Abstract

Context. Interstellar ices and their energetic processing play an important role in advancing the chemical complexity in space. Interstellar ices covering dust grains are intrinsically mixed, and it is assumed that physicochemical changes induced by energetic processing – triggered by photons, electrons, and ions – strongly depend on the content of the ice. Yet, the modelling of these complex mixed systems in experiments and theory is complicated.

Aims. In this paper, we investigate the effect of infrared irradiation on a series of different molecules mixed with porous amorphous solid water (pASW) to study the release of vibrational energy in the hydrogen-bonding network of water as a function of mixing ratio and ice content. Particularly, we select mixtures of 20:1 H₂O:X and 5:1 H₂O:X with X=CO₂, NH₃, or CH₄.

Methods. Infrared radiation was supplied by the intense and tunable free electron laser (FEL) 2 at the HFML-FELIX facility. We monitored the structural changes in the interstellar ice analogue after resonant infrared excitation using Fourier-transform reflection absorption infrared (FT-RAIR) spectroscopy.

Results. We observed that on-resonance irradiation at the OH-stretching vibration of pASW results in quantitatively identical changes compared to pure pASW for all investigated mixtures. The structural changes we observed closely resemble the previously reported local reordering. The 5:1 mixtures show weaker changes compared to pure pASW, with a decrease in strength from NH₃ to CO₂.

Conclusions. Since the hydrogen-bonding network of pASW restructures similarly upon FEL irradiation, regardless of the mixing component, treating ice layers in models that simulate energy dissipation in the hydrogen-bonding network as pure H2O ice layers can be a justified approximation. Hence, complex systems might not always be necessary to describe the infrared energetic processing of ices.