Shock Fronts at the Disk-Envelope Interface of the Class 0/I Protostar L1527

Observations of the protostar L1527 show that precursor organic molecules are enhanced in the gas phase in the inner envelope and outer disk region. Explaining why could lead to a better understanding of how these molecules are distributed in planetary formation. Models using RadChemT, a radiative transfer and astrochemistry code used to model protostars in the class 0/I phase, show that precursor organics form efficiently but remain locked on the surfaces of dust grains. This study updates RadChemT to investigate the role of accretion shocks in forming precursor organic molecules, in the region where infalling material from the envelope impacts and heats the protostellar disk. The aim is to probe whether shock heating of the dust grains can account for the desorption of these molecules into the gas phase to match observations. We use the Paris-Durham shock code, a code developed to model magnetized molecular shocks propagating in interstellar environments, to produce updated temperature and density profiles for a low-velocity (~4 km s^−1) J-type shock propagating in a high-density medium (𝑛_𝐻 = 10^9 cm^−3). With the updated profiles, we use RadChemT to repeat the steps taken in the earlier research to produce new abundances and present our results.