Detection of DCO+ in a circumstellar disk

We report the first detection of DCO+ in a circumstellar disk. The DCO+ J = 5-4 line at 360.169 GHz is observed with the 15 m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in the disk around the pre-main sequence star TW Hya. Together with measurements of the HCO+ and (HCO+)-C-13 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.