Water Snowline in Young Stellar Objects with Various Density Structures Using Radiative Transfer Models

Tracing the water snowline in low-mass young stellar objects (YSOs) is important because dust grain growth is promoted and the chemical composition varies at the water snowline, which influences planet formation and its properties.

In protostellar envelopes, the water snowline can be estimated as a function of luminosity using a relation derived from radiative transfer models, and these predictions are consistent with observations.

However, accurately estimating the water snowline in protoplanetary disks requires new relations that account for the disk structure. We present the relations between luminosity and water snowline using the dust continuum radiative transfer models with various density structures. We adopt two-dimensional density structures for an envelope-only model (Model E), an envelope+disk+cavity model (Model E+D), and a protoplanetary disk model (Model PPD).

The relations between the water snowline, where T_dust = 100 K, and the total luminosity, ranging 0.1-1,000 solar luminosity, are well fitted by a power-law relation, R_snow=a * (L/L_solar)^p au. The factor a decreases with increasing disk density, while the power index p has values around 0.5 in all models. As the disk becomes denser, the water snowline forms at smaller radii even at the same luminosity, since dense dust hinders photon propagation.

We also explore the effect of viscous heating on the water snowline. In Model PPD with viscous heating, the water snowline shifts outward by a few au up to 15 au, increasing the factor a and decreasing the power index p. In Model E+D with lower disk mass, the effect of viscous heating is negligible, indicating that the disk mass controls the effect.

The discrepancy between our models and direct observations provides insights into the recent outburst event and the presence of a disk structure in low-mass YSOs.

Young-Jun Kim, Jeong-Eun Lee, Giseon Baek, Seokho Lee

Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2510.14294 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2510.14294v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.14294
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Journal reference: JKAS (2025) Vol.58 No.2 pp.243-254
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5303/JKAS.2025.58.2.243
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Submission history
From: Young-Jun K
[v1] Thu, 16 Oct 2025 04:37:40 UTC (2,490 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14294

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