2018ApJ...868L..37D

Based on the interstellar CO/H₂ ratio, carbon monoxide-based censuses of protoplanetary disks in Lupus, σ Orionis, and Chamaeleon I found no disks more massive than the minimum-mass solar nebula, which is inconsistent with the existence of exoplanets more massive than Jupiter. Observations and models are converging on the idea that ionization-driven chemistry depletes carbon monoxide in T-Tauri disks. Yet the extent of CO depletion depends on the incident flux of ionizing radiation, and some T-Tauri stars may have winds strong enough to shield their disks from cosmic rays. There is also a range of X-ray luminosities possible for a given stellar mass. Here we use a suite of chemical models, each with a different incident X-ray or cosmic-ray flux, to assess whether CO depletion is a typical outcome for T-Tauri disks. We find that CO dissociation in the outer disk is a robust result for realistic ionization rates, with abundance reductions between 70% and 99.99% over 2 Myr of evolution. Furthermore, after the initial dissociation epoch, the inner disk shows some recovery of the CO abundance from CO₂ dissociation. In highly ionized disks, CO recovery in the inner disk combined with depletion in the outer disk creates a centrally peaked CO abundance distribution. The emitting area in rare CO isotopologues may be an indirect ionization indicator: in a cluster of disks with similar ages, those with the most compact CO isotopologue emission see the highest ionization rates.