Lack of PAH emission toward low-mass embedded young stellar objects

Aims. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been detected toward molecular clouds and some young stars with disks, but have not yet been associated with embedded young stars. We present a sensitive mid-infrared spectroscopic survey of PAH features toward a sample of low-mass embedded young stellar objects (YSOs). The aim is to put constraints on the PAH abundance in the embedded phase of star formation using radiative transfer modeling. Methods. VLT-ISAAC L-band spectra for 39 sources and Spitzer IRS spectra for 53 sources are presented. Line intensities are compared to recent surveys of Herbig Ae/Be and T Tauri stars. The radiative transfer codes RADMC and RADICAL are used to model the PAH emission from embedded YSOs consisting of a pre-main-sequence star with a circumstellar disk embedded in an envelope. The dependence of the PAH feature on PAH abundance, stellar radiation field, inclination and the extinction by the surrounding envelope is studied. Results. The 3.3 μm PAH feature is undetected for the majority of the sample (97%), with typical upper limits of 5 $\times$ 10-16 W m-2. One source originally classified as class I, IRS 4