Methanol and its Relation to the Water Snowline in the Disk around the Young Outbursting Star V883 Ori

• Published in: Astrophysical journal. Letters 2018-09, Vol.864 (1), p.L23
• Main Authors: van 't Hoff, Merel L. R., Tobin, John J., Trapman, Leon, Harsono, Daniel, Sheehan, Patrick D., Fischer, William J., Megeath, S. Thomas, van Dishoeck, Ewine F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: circumstellar matter; Emission; Ice composition; Ice formation; ISM: molecules; Methanol; Opacity; Planet formation; Planetary composition; Protoplanetary disks; Protoplanets; Radio telescopes; Snowline; stars: individual (V883 Ori); stars: pre-main sequence; Surface boundary layer; Surface layers
• ISSN: 2041-8205; 2041-8213
• DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aadb8a

We report the detection of methanol in the disk around the young outbursting star V883 Ori with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Four transitions are observed with upper-level energies ranging between 115 and 459 K. The emission is spatially resolved with the 0 14 beam and follows the Keplerian rotation previously observed for C18O. Using a rotational diagram analysis, we find a disk-averaged column density of ∼1017 cm−2 and a rotational temperature of ∼90-100 K, suggesting that the methanol has thermally desorbed from the dust grains. We derive outer radii between 120 and 140 au for the different transitions, compared to the 360 au outer radius for C18O. Depending on the exact physical structure of the disk, the methanol emission could originate in the surface layers beyond the water snowline. Alternatively, the bulk of the methanol emission originates inside the water snowline, which can then be as far out as ∼100 au, instead of 42 au as was previously inferred from the continuum opacity. In addition, these results show that outbursting young stars like V883 Ori are good sources to study the ice composition of planet-forming material through thermally desorbed complex molecules, which have proven to be hard to observe in more evolved protoplanetary disks.