Chemistry on Rotating Grain Surfaces: Ro-thermal Desorption of Molecules from Ice Mantles

Abstract It is widely believed that water and complex organic molecules (COMs) first form in the ice mantle of dust grains and are subsequently returned into the gas due to grain heating by intense radiation of protostars. Previous research on the desorption of molecules from the ice mantle assumed that grains are at rest, which is contrary to the fact that grains are suprathermally rotating as a result of their interaction with an anisotropic radiation or gas flow. To clearly understand how molecules are released into the gas phase, the effect of grain suprathermal rotation on surface chemistry must be quantified. In this paper, we study the effect of suprathermal rotation of dust grains spun-up by radiative torques on the desorption of molecules from icy grain mantles around protostars. We show that centrifugal potential energy due to grain rotation reduces the potential barrier of molecules and significantly enhances their desorption rate. We term this mechanism rotational-thermal or ro-thermal desorption. We apply the ro-thermal mechanism for studying the desorption of molecules from icy grains that are simultaneously heated to high temperatures and spun-up to suprathermal rotation by an intense radiation of protostars. We find that ro-thermal desorption is much more efficient than thermal desorption for molecules with high binding energy such as water and COMs. Our results have important implications for understanding the origin of COMs detected in star-forming regions and call for attention to the effect of suprathermal rotation of icy grains to use molecules as a tracer of physical conditions of star-forming regions.