The OH rotational population and photodissociation of H₂O in DG Tauri

We analyze the OH rotational emission in the Spitzer Space Telescope mid-infrared spectrum of the T Tauri star DG Tau. OH is observed in emission from upper level energies of 1900 K to 28,000 K. The rotational diagram cannot be fit with any single combination of temperature and column density and has slopes that correspond to excitation temperatures ranging from 200 K to 6000 K. The relative Λ-doublet population within each rotational level is not equal, showing that the OH population is not in thermal equilibrium. The symmetric Λ-doublet state is preferred in all rotational states, with an average of 0.5 for the population ratio of the anti-symmetric to symmetric state. We show that the population distribution of the high rotational lines and the Λ-doublet ratio are consistent with the formation of OH following the photo-dissociation of H₂O by FUV photons in the second absorption band of water (∼1150-1400 Å), which includes Lyα. Other processes, OH formation from either photo-dissociation of water in the first absorption band (1450-1900 Å) or the reaction O(¹ D) + H₂, or collisional excitation, cannot explain the observed emission in the high rotational states but could potentially contribute to the population of lower rotational levels. These results demonstrate that the photodissociation of water is active in DG Tau and support the idea that the hot rotational OH emission commonly observed in Classical T Tauri stars is due to the dissociation of H₂O by FUV radiation.