Unlocking CO Depletion in Protoplanetary Disks II. Primordial C/H
  Predictions Inside the CO Snowline
  CO is thought to be the main reservoir of volatile carbon in protoplanetary
disks, and thus the primary initial source of carbon in the atmospheres of
forming giant planets. However, recent observations of protoplanetary disks
point towards low volatile carbon abundances in many systems, including at
radii interior to the CO snowline. One potential explanation is that gas phase
carbon is chemically reprocessed into less volatile species, which are frozen
on dust grain surfaces as ice. This mechanism has the potential to change the
primordial C/H ratio in the gas. However, current observations primarily probe
the upper layers of the disk. It is not clear if the low volatile carbon
abundances extend to the midplane, where planets form. We have run a grid of
198 chemical models, exploring how the chemical reprocessing of CO depends on
disk mass, dust grain size distribution, temperature, cosmic ray and X-ray
ionization rate, and initial water abundance. Building on our previous work
focusing on the warm molecular layer, here we analyze the results for our grid
of models in the disk midplane at 12 au. We find that either an ISM level
cosmic ray ionization rate or the presence of UV photons due to a low dust
surface density are needed to chemically reduce the midplane CO gas abundance
by at least an order of magnitude within 1 Myr. In the majority of our models
CO does not undergo substantial reprocessing by in situ chemistry and there is
little change in the gas phase C/H and C/O ratios over the lifetime of the
typical disk. However, in the small sub-set of disks where the disk midplane is
subject to a source of ionization or photolysis, the gas phase C/O ratio
increases by up to nearly 9 orders of magnitude due to conversion of CO into
volatile hydrocarbons.
