Solid CO₂in low-mass young stellar objects

Context. Solid interstellar CO2 is an abundant component of ice dust mantles. Its ubiquity towards quiescent molecular clouds, as well as protostellar envelopes, has recently been confirmed by the IRS (InfraRed Spectrograph) aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Although it has been shown that CO2 cannot be efficiently formed in the gas phase, the CO2 surface formation pathway is still unclear. To date several CO2 surface formation mechanisms induced by energetic (e.g., UV photolysis and cosmic ray irradiation) and non-energetic (e.g., cold atom addition) input have been proposed.