The photodissociation of CO in circumstellar envelopes

The CO photodissociation rate for the unshielded ISM is calculated using recent laboratory results which confirm that photodissociation occurs by way of line absorption. A value of 2.0 x 10 to the -10th/s, an order of magnitude higher than the rate used in the past, is obtained. The new rate and a treatment of the radiative transfer and shielding are used to develop a theory for the CO abundance in the circumstellar envelopes of cool, evolved stars, and results are presented on the spatial variation of CO, C, and C(+). It is shown that these distributions play important roles in determining the observational properties of circumstellar envelopes.