JOYS+ study of solid state 12C/13C isotope ratios in protostellar envelopes with JWST
Nashanty Brunken (Graduate Student, University of Leiden)
CO2 and CO ice have proven to be invaluable when studying the chemical evolution of interstellar material. Both species have multiple vibrational modes in the near- and mid-infrared, and the ice absorption bands of CO2 ice are highly sensitive to their local chemical environment making CO2 ice an ideal tracer of physicochemical processes.
Additionally, observations of CO2 and CO ice provide a unique opportunity to quantify the solid state 12C/13C ratio in protostellar envelopes and compare the findings with carbon isotope ratios measured in molecular clouds, disks, comets and most recently exoplanet atmospheres. Studies of carbon isotope ratios are crucial for our understanding of fractionation processes in astronomical environments.
Now with the new era of the James Webb Space Telescope the entire 2 - 28 μm spectral region has become available at high S/N, enabling for the first time a simultaneous detection of the various weak and strong ice absorption features of CO2, CO and their isotopologues in solar-mass and high mass protostars. In the JOYS+ study we quantify the solid state 12C/13C ratios in a large sample of 17 low-mass young stellar objects using NIRSpec and MIRI observations of CO2 and CO ice. Additionally, we combine the observations from the IPA program and JOYS+ program with high resolution laboratory spectra to analyze the band profiles of the 2.70 μm and the 15.2 μm bands of 12CO2 and the 4.39 μm band of 13CO2 of several low and and high mass protostars.
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