Related papers: Efficient Simulations of Interstellar Gas-Grain Ch…
We have designed an improved algorithm that enables us to simulate the chemistry of cold dense interstellar clouds with a full gas-grain reaction network. The chemistry is treated by a unified microscopic-macroscopic Monte Carlo approach…
Interstellar dust grains do not have a single well-defined origin. Stars are demonstrably dust producers, but also efficient destroyers of cosmic dust. Dust destruction in the ISM is believed to be the result of SN shocks hitting the…
Reaction networks in the bulk and on surfaces are widespread in physical, chemical and biological systems. In macroscopic systems, which include large populations of reactive species, stochastic fluctuations are negligible and the reaction…
The formation of molecular hydrogen in the interstellar medium takes place on the surfaces of dust grains. Hydrogen molecules play a role in gas-phase reactions that produce other molecules, some of which serve as coolants during…
Aims: The gas-phase abundance of methanol in dark quiescent cores in the interstellar medium cannot be explained by gas-phase chemistry. In fact, the only possible synthesis of this species appears to be production on the surfaces of dust…
Dust grains are an important component of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. We present the first direct measurement of the residence times of interstellar dust in the different ISM phases, and of the transition rates between these…
The temperatures of dust grains play important roles in the chemical evolution of molecular clouds. Unlike large grains, the temperature fluctuations of small grains induced by photons may be significant. Therefore, if the grain size…
We present a novel framework to self-consistently model the effects of radiation fields, dust physics and molecular chemistry (H$_2$) in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. The model combines a state-of-the-art radiation…
We have studied deuterium fractionation on interstellar grains with the use of an exact method known as the direct master equation approach. We consider conditions pertinent to dense clouds at late times when the hydrogen is mostly in…
Dust plays a key role in the evolution of the ISM and its correct modelling in numerical simulations is therefore fundamental. We present a new and self-consistent model that treats grain thermal coupling with the gas, radiation balance,…
The recombination of hydrogen in the interstellar medium, taking place on surfaces of microscopic dust grains, is an essential process in the evolution of chemical complexity in interstellar clouds. The H_2 formation process has been…
We present a new method to analyse and reduce chemical networks and apply this technique to the chemistry in molecular clouds. Using the technique, we investigated the possibility of reducing the number of chemical reactions and species in…
Glycoaldehyde, ethylene glycol, and methyl formate are complex organic molecules that have been observed in dark molecular clouds. Because there is no efficient gas-phase route to produce these species, it is expected that a low-temperature…
The degree of porosity in interstellar dust-grain material is poorly defined, although recent work has suggested that the grains could be highly porous. Aside from influencing the optical properties of the dust, porosity has the potential…
We present a new algorithm, MULTIGRAIN, for modelling the dynamics of an entire population of small dust grains immersed in gas, typical of conditions that are found in molecular clouds and protoplanetary discs. The MULTIGRAIN method is…
Context. The abundances of many observed compounds in interstellar molecular clouds still lack an explanation, despite extensive research that includes both gas and solid (dust-grain surface) phase reactions. Aims. We aim to qualitatively…
We have developed an algorithm coupling mesoscopic simulations on different levels in a hierarchy of Cartesian meshes. Based on the multiscale nature of the chemical reactions, some molecules in the system will live on a fine-grained mesh,…
The results of experiments on the formation of molecular hydrogen on low density and high density amorphous ice surfaces are analyzed using a rate equation model. The activation energy barriers for the relevant diffusion and desorption…
Chemistry plays an important role in the interstellar medium (ISM), regulating heating and cooling of the gas, and determining abundances of molecular species that trace gas properties in observations. Although solving the time-dependent…
A highly efficient formulation of moment equations for stochastic reaction networks is introduced. It is based on a set of binomial moments that capture the combinatorics of the reaction processes. The resulting set of equations can be…