The impact of cosmic-ray attenuation on the carbon cycle emission in molecular clouds

Abstract

Observations of the emission of the carbon cycle species (C, C+ CO) are commonly used to diagnose gas properties in the interstellar medium but are significantly sensitive to the cosmic-ray ionization rate. The carbon-cycle chemistry is known to be quite sensitive to the cosmic-ray ionization rate, $ζ$, controlled by the flux of low-energy cosmic rays which get attenuated through molecular clouds. However, astrochemical models commonly assume a constant cosmic-ray ionization rate in the clouds. We investigate the effect of cosmic-ray attenuation on the emission of carbon cycle species from molecular clouds, in particular the [CII] 158 $μ$m, [CI] 609 $μ$m and CO (J = 1 - 0) 115.27 GHz lines. We use a post-processed chemical model of diffuse and dense simulated molecular clouds and quantify the variation in both column densities and velocity integrated line emission of the carbon cycle with different cosmic-ray ionization rate models. We find that the abundances and column densities of carbon cycle species is significantly impacted by the chosen cosmic-ray ionization rate model: no single constant ionization rate can reproduce the abundances modelled with an attenuated cosmic-ray model. Further, we show that constant ionization rate models fail to simultaneously reproduce the integrated emission of the lines we consider, and their deviations from a physically derived cosmic-ray attenuation model is too complex to be simply corrected. We demonstrate that the two clouds we model exhibit a similar average $A_{\rm V, eff}$ -- $n_{\rm H}$ relationship, resulting in an average relation between the cosmic-ray ionization rate and density $ζ(n_{\rm H})$. We conclude by providing a number of implementation recommendations for CRs in astrochemical models, but emphasize the necessity for column-dependent cosmic-ray ionization rate prescriptions.