FORMEDSTARSTHECO2DIAGNOSTIC.PDFVIP

The Astrophysical Journal, 730:124 (15pp), 2011 April 1 C 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/730/2/124 THE THERMAL EVOLUTION OF ICES IN THE ENVIRONMENTS OF NEWLY FORMED STARS: THE CO2 DIAGNOSTIC A. M. Cook1,5, D. C. B. Whittet1, S. S. Shenoy2,5, P. A. Gerakines3, D. W. White3, and J. E. Chiar4 1 New York Center for Astrobiology and Department of Physics, Applied Physics Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 Eighth Street, Troy, NY 12180, USA 2 Spitzer Science Center, Mail Code 220-6, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 3 Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 310 Campbell Hall, 1300 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA 4 SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA Received 2010 July 22; accepted 2011 February 4; published 2011 March 11 ABSTRACT Archival data from the Infrared Spectrometer of the Spitzer Space Telescope are used to study the 15 μm absorption feature of solid CO2 toward 28 young stellar objects (YSOs) of approximately solar mass. Fits to the absorption pro?le using laboratory spectra enable categorization according to the degree of thermal processing of the ice matrix that contains the CO2. The majority of YSOs in our sample (20 out of 28) are found to be consistent with a combination of polar (H2O-rich) and nonpolar (CO-rich) ices at low temperature; the remainder exhibit pro?le structure consistent with partial crystallization as the result of signi?cant heating. Ice-phase column densities of CO2 are determined and compared with those of other species. Lines of sight with crystallization signatures in their spectra are found to be systematically de?cient in solid-phase CO, as expected if CO is being sublimated in regions where the ices are heated to crystallization temperatures. Signi?cant variation is found in the CO2 abundance with respect to both H2O (the dominant ice constituent) and tot