Titanium and vanadium oxides as possible tracers of C/O in protoplanetary disks
Abstract
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. These observations strongly motivate the need for a method that allows characterization of the adopted C/O ratio in protoplanetary disks independently from the determination of the host star composition. Here we use the HSC chemistry 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 20. We find that the vanadium nitride/vanadium oxide and titanium hydride/titanium oxide gas phase ratios strongly depend on the degree of the C/O ratio in the hot parts of disks. Our calculations suggest that these ratios can be used as tracers of the C/O value in protoplanetary disks.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress
- Pub Date:
- September 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013EPSC....8..230D