2003A&A...400L...1V

We report the first detection of DCO⁺ in a circumstellar disk. The DCO⁺ J=5-4 line at 360.169GHz is observed with the 15m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in the disk around the pre-main sequence star TW Hya. Together with measurements of the HCO⁺ and H¹³CO⁺ J=4-3 lines, this allows an accurate determination of the DCO⁺/HCO⁺ ratio in this disk. The inferred value of 0.035±0.015 is close to that found in cold pre-stellar cores and is somewhat higher than that measured in the envelope around the low-mass protostar IRAS 16293-2422. It is also close to the DCN/HCN ratio obtained for pristine cometary material in the jet of comet Hale-Bopp. The observed DCO⁺/HCO⁺ ratio for TW Hya is consistent with theoretical models of disks which consider gas-phase fractionation processes within a realistic 2-D temperature distribution and which include the effects of freeze-out onto grains.