ALMA imaging of the CO snowline of the HD 163296 disk with DCO⁺

Abstract

Context. The high spatial resolution and line sensitivity of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) opens the possibility of resolving emission from molecules in large samples of circumstellar disks. With an understanding of the conditions under which these molecules can have high abundance, they can be used as direct tracers of distinct physical regions. In particular, DCO+ is expected to have an enhanced abundance within a few Kelvin of the CO freezeout temperature of 19 K, making it a useful probe of the cold disk midplane.