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We assess the ionising effect of low energy protostellar cosmic rays inprotoplanetary disks around a young solar mass star for a wide range of diskparameters. We assume a source of low energy cosmic rays located close to theyoung star which travel diffusively through the protoplanetary disk. We useobservationally inferred values from nearby star-forming regions for the totaldisk mass and the radial density profile. We investigate the influence ofvarying the disk mass within the observed scatter for a solar mass star. Wefind that for a large range of disk masses and density profiles thatprotoplanetary disks are "optically thin" to low energy ($\sim$3 GeV) cosmicrays. At $R\sim10$au, for all of the disks that we consider($M_\mathrm{disk}=6.0\times10^{-4} - 2.4\times 10^{-2}M_\odot$), the ionisationrate due to low energy stellar cosmic rays is larger than that expected fromunmodulated galactic cosmic rays. This is in contrast to our previous resultswhich assumed a much denser disk which may be appropriate for a more embeddedsource. At $R\sim70$au, the ionisation rate due to stellar cosmic raysdominates in $\sim$50% of the disks. These are the less massive disks with lesssteep density profiles. At this radius there is at least an order of magnitudedifference in the ionisation rate between the least and most massive disk thatwe consider. Our results indicate, for a wide range of disk masses, that lowenergy stellar cosmic rays provide an important source of ionisation at thedisk midplane at large radii ($\sim$70au).

Stellar cosmic rays as an important source of ionisation in protoplanetary disks: a disk mass dependent process