Vertical and radial distribution of atomic carbon in HD 163296

Abstract: In protoplanetary disks, atomic carbon is expected to originate from the PDR at the disk surface where CO is dissociated by UV photons coming from the stellar, or external interstellar, radiation field. Even though atomic carbon has been detected in several protoplanetary disks, there is a lack of spatially resolved observations of it. For HD 163296 protoplanetary disk, we aim to obtain both radial and vertical structure of [CI]$={^3}{P_1} - {^3}{P_0}$ line emission and perform the first direct comparison of this tracer with optically thick line emission $^{12}$CO $J=2-1$. We used archival ALMA data for [CI]$={^3}{P_1} - {^3}{P_0}$ and previously published ${^{12}}$ CO $J=2-1$ data in HD 163296. Through the software of disksurf we extracted the vertical structure, meanwhile radial profiles were obtained directly from imaging. Brand new DALI modelling was employed to perform direct comparison to the data. We found that these tracers are collocated radially but not vertically, where $^{12}$CO $J=2-1$ emission is, on average, located at higher altitudes, as it is also the case for other tracers in the same disk. Due to this difference in vertical height of the emission, the optically thick $^{12}$CO $J=2-1$ emission line appears to trace the highest altitudes, despite the expected formation mechanism of [CI] in the disk. The latter phenomena may be due to efficient mixing of the upper layers of the disk, or UV photons penetrating deeper than we expected.