CO2 INFRARED PHONON MODES IN INTERSTELLAR ICE MIXTURES

Abstract

ABSTRACT CO2 ice is an important reservoir of carbon and oxygen in star- and planet-forming regions. Together with water and CO, CO2 sets the physical and chemical characteristics of interstellar icy grain mantles, including desorption and diffusion energies for other ice constituents. A detailed understanding of CO2 ice spectroscopy is a prerequisite to characterize CO2 interactions with other volatiles both in interstellar ices and in laboratory experiments of interstellar ice analogs. We report laboratory spectra of the CO2 longitudinal optical (LO) phonon mode in pure CO2 ice and in CO2 ice mixtures with H2O, CO, and O2 components. We show that the LO phonon mode position is sensitive to the mixing ratio of various ice components of astronomical interest. In the era of the James Webb Space Telescope, this characteristic could be used to constrain interstellar ice compositions and morphologies. More immediately, LO phonon mode spectroscopy provides a sensitive probe of ice mixing in the laboratory and should thus enable diffusion measurements with higher precision than has been previously possible.