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arXiv 0809.0780astro-ph
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H3 +冷却在原始气体中重要吗?

Is H3+ cooling ever important in primordial gas?

S. C. O. Glover, D. W. Savin

摘要:

对不含金属的第三族恒星形成的研究通常主要集中在H2冷却所扮演的角色,因为相对于其他可能的分子或离子冷却剂,它的化学丰度很大。然而,虽然H2在低气体密度下通常是最重要的冷却剂,但由于其达到局部热力学平衡(LTE)的低临界密度以及在其发射线中产生的大的不透明度,其在高气体密度下不是有效的冷却剂。因此,来自其他化学物种的发射可能在冷却高密度原始气体中发挥重要作用。一个特别有趣的候选者是H3+分子离子。这种离子的LTE冷却速率大约是H2的十亿倍,并且与其他原始分子离子(如H2+或HeH+)不同,它不容易通过与H或H2的碰撞从气体中去除。人们已经知道,它至少在一个天体物理学背景下是一种重要的冷却剂-气体巨星的上层大气-但它在冷却原始气体中的作用以前几乎没有得到过研究。在本文中,我们调查的H3+冷却的原始气体中的潜在重要性,使用一个新开发的H3+冷却函数和最详细的原始化学模型出版的日期。我们表明,虽然H3+是,在大多数情况下,第三个最重要的冷却剂在致密的原始气体(后H2和HD),它仍然是不重要的,因为它的贡献不超过百分之几的总冷却。我们还表明,在气体照射的足够强的宇宙射线或X射线的通量,H3+可以成为占主导地位的冷却剂的气体,虽然所需的通量的大小呈现这种情况不太可能发生。

英文摘要:

Studies of the formation of metal-free Population III stars usually focus primarily on the role played by H2 cooling, on account of its large chemical abundance relative to other possible molecular or ionic coolants. However, while H2 is generally the most important coolant at low gas densities, it is not an effective coolant at high gas densities, owing to the low critical density at which it reaches local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) and to the large opacities that develop in its emission lines. It is therefore possible that emission from other chemical species may play an important role in cooling high density primordial gas. A particularly interesting candidate is the H3+ molecular ion. This ion has an LTE cooling rate that is roughly a billion times larger than that of H2, and unlike other primordial molecular ions such as H2+ or HeH+, it is not easily removed from the gas by collisions with H or H2. It is already known to be an important coolant in at least one astrophysical context -- the upper atmospheres of gas giants -- but its role in the cooling of primordial gas has received little previous study. In this paper, we investigate the potential importance of H3+ cooling in primordial gas using a newly-developed H3+ cooling function and the most detailed model of primordial chemistry published to date. We show that although H3+ is, in most circumstances, the third most important coolant in dense primordial gas (after H2 and HD), it is nevertheless unimportant, as it contributes no more than a few percent of the total cooling. We also show that in gas irradiated by a sufficiently strong flux of cosmic rays or X-rays, H3+ can become the dominant coolant in the gas, although the size of the flux required renders this scenario unlikely to occur.

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