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Published December 2019 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

The water line emission and ortho-to-para ratio in the Orion Bar photon-dominated region

Abstract

Context. The ortho-to-para ratio (OPR) of water in the interstellar medium (ISM) is often assumed to be related to the formation temperature of water molecules, making it a potentially interesting tracer of the thermal history of interstellar gas. Aims. A very low OPR of 0.1–0.5 was previously reported in the Orion Bar photon-dominated region (PDR), based on observations of two optically thin H₂¹⁸O lines which were analyzed by using a single-slab large velocity gradient (LVG) model. The corresponding spin temperature does not coincide with the kinetic temperature of the molecular gas in this UV-illuminated region. This was interpreted as an indication of water molecules being formed on cold icy grains which were subsequently released by UV photodesorption. Methods. A more complete set of water observations in the Orion Bar, including seven H₂¹⁶O lines and one H₂¹⁸O line, carried out using Herschel/HIFI instrument, was reanalyzed using the Meudon PDR code to derive gas-phase water abundance and the OPR. The model takes into account the steep density and temperature gradients present in the region. Results. The model line intensities are in good agreement with the observations assuming that water molecules formed with an OPR corresponding to thermal equilibrium conditions at the local kinetic temperature of the gas and when solely considering gas-phase chemistry and water gas-grain exchanges through adsorption and desorption. Gas-phase water is predicted to arise from a region deep into the cloud, corresponding to a visual extinction of A_V ~ 9, with a H₂¹⁶O fractional abundance of ~2 × 10⁻⁷ and column density of (1.4 ± 0.8) × 10¹⁵ cm⁻² for a total cloud depth of A_V = 15. A line-of-sight average OPR of 2.8 ± 0.2 is derived. Conclusions. The observational data are consistent with a nuclear spin isomer repartition corresponding to the thermal equilibrium at a temperature of 36 ± 2 K, much higher than the spin temperature previously reported for this region and close to the gas kinetic temperature in the water-emitting gas.

Additional Information

© 2019 T. Putaud et al. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Received 5 March 2019; Accepted 6 June 2019; Published online 22 November 2019. This work was supported by the Programme National de Physique et Chimie du Milieu Interstellaire (PCMI) of the CNRS/INSU, the INC/INP co-funded by the CEA and the CNES. Financial support from the LabEx MiChem, par of the French state funds managed by the ANR within the investissements d'avenir program under reference ANR-11-10EX-0004-02 is acknowledged. Fundings from the Ile-de-France region DIM ACAV + is acknowledged. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Created:
August 19, 2023
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October 19, 2023