  At the high densities and low temperatures found in star forming regions, all
molecules other than H2 should stick on dust grains on timescales shorter than
the cloud lifetimes. Yet these clouds are detected in the millimeter lines of
gaseous CO. At these temperatures, thermal desorption is negligible and hence a
non-thermal desorption mechanism is necessary to maintain molecules in the gas
phase. Here, the first laboratory study of the photodesorption of pure CO ice
under ultra high vacuum is presented, which gives a desorption rate of 3E-3 CO
molecules per UV (7-10.5 eV) photon at 15 K. This rate is factors of 1E2-1E5
larger than previously estimated and is comparable to estimates of other
non-thermal desorption rates. The experiments constrains the mechanism to a
single photon desorption process of ice surface molecules. The measured
efficiency of this process shows that the role of CO photodesorption in
preventing total removal of molecules in the gas has been underestimated.
