Absorption of crystalline water ice in the far infrared at different temperatures

Abstract

The optical properties of ice in the far infrared are important for models of protoplanetary and debris disks. In this report we derive a new set of data for the absorption (represented by the imaginary part of the refractive index $\kappa$) of crystalline water ice in this spectral range, including a detailed inspection of the temperature dependence, which had not been done in such detail before. We measured the transmission of three ice layers with different thicknesses at temperatures $\vartheta = 10...250$K and present data at wavelengths $\lambda=80...625$ microns. We found a change in the spectral dependence of $\kappa$ at a wavelength of $175 \pm 6$ microns. At shorter wavelengths, $\kappa$ exhibits a constant flat slope and no significant temperature dependence. Long-ward of that wavelength, the slope gets steeper and has a clear, approximately linear temperature dependence. This change in the behaviour is probably caused by a characteristic absorption band of water ice. The measured data were fitted by a power-law model that analytically describes the absorption behaviour at an arbitrary temperature. This model can readily be applied to any object of interest, for instance a protoplanetary or a debris disk. To illustrate how the model works, we simulated the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the resolved, large debris disk around the nearby solar-type star HD 207129. Replacing our ice model by another, commonly used data set for water ice results in a different SED slope at longer wavelengths. This leads to changes in the characteristic model parameters of the disk, such as the inferred particle size distribution, and affects the interpretation of the underlying collisional physics of the disk.