Related papers: Molecular dynamics simulations of D2O ice photodes…
The mobility of atoms, molecules and radicals in icy grain mantles regulate ice restructuring, desorption, and chemistry in astrophysical environments. Interstellar ices are dominated by H2O, and diffusion on external and internal (pore)…
Gas-grain and gas-phase reactions dominate the formation of molecules in the interstellar medium (ISM). Gas-grain reactions require a substrate (e.g. a dust or ice grain) on which the reaction is able to occur. The formation of molecular…
The ability of primordial gas to cool in proto-galactic haloes exposed to Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation is critically dependent on the self-shielding of H_2. We perform radiative transfer calculations of LW line photons, post-processing…
Interstellar ices are mainly composed of amorphous solid water (ASW) containing small amounts of hypervolatiles, such as O2, whose diffusion-limited reactions play a key role in space chemistry. Although O2 is an important precursor…
Water is usually the main component of ice mantles, which cover the cores of dust grains in cold portions of dense interstellar clouds. When molecular hydrogen is adsorbed onto an icy mantle through physisorption, a common assumption in…
Experimental results on the thermal desorption of benzene (C6H6) from amorphous silica (SiO2) are presented. The amorphous SiO2 substrate was imaged using atomic force microscopy (AFM), revealing a surface morphology reminiscent of that of…
Water is the main component of interstellar ice mantles, is abundant in the solar system and is a crucial ingredient for life. The formation of this molecule in the interstellar medium cannot be explained by gas-phase chemistry only and its…
The efficiency of optical trapping of ultracold atoms depend on the atomic dynamic dipole polarizability governing the atom-field interaction. In this article, we have calculated the real and imaginary parts of the dynamic dipole…
Water shows anomalous properties that are enhanced upon supercooling. The unusual behavior is observed in both H$_2$O and D$_2$O, however with different temperature dependences for the two isotopes. It is often noted that comparing the…
We investigate the water deuteration ratio and ortho-to-para nuclear spin ratio of H2 (OPR(H2)) during the formation and early evolution of a molecular cloud, following the scenario that accretion flows sweep and accumulate HI gas to form…
The ionization energy of D$_2$ has been determined experimentally from measurements involving two-photon Doppler-free vacuum-ultraviolet pulsed laser excitation and near-infrared continuous-wave laser excitation to yield…
We investigate deuterium chemistry coupled with the nuclear spin-state chemistry of H$_2$ and H$_3^+$ in protoplanetary disks. Multiple paths of deuterium fractionation are found; exchange reactions with D atoms, such as HCO$^+$ + D, are…
Solid-phase photo-processes involving icy dust grains greatly affect the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium by leading to the formation of complex organic molecules and by inducing photodesorption. So far, the focus of laboratory…
During the epoch of reionization, the formation of radiation sources is accompanied by the growth of a H- photodissociating flux. We estimate the impact of this flux on the formation of molecular hydrogen and cooling in the first galaxies,…
Under cold conditions in dense cores, gas-phase molecules and atoms are depleted from the gas-phase to the surface of interstellar grains. Considering the time scales and physical conditions within these cores, a portion of these molecules…
Aims. Formamide (HCONH2) is the simplest molecule containing the peptide bond first detected in the gas phase in Orion-KL and SgrB2. In recent years, it has been observed in high temperature regions such as hot corinos, where thermal…
Tight binding molecular dynamics simulations, with a non orthogonal basis set, are performed to study the fragmentation of carbon fullerenes doped with up to six silicon atoms. Both substitutional and adsorbed cases are considered. The…
The deuterium fractionation of gas-phase molecules in hot cores is believed to reflect the composition of interstellar ices. The deuteration of methanol is a major puzzle, however, because the isotopologue ratio [CH2DOH]/[CH3OD], which is…
Aims. We attempt to understand the presence of gas phase CO below its freezing temperature in circumstellar disks. We study two promising mechanisms to explain this phenomenon: turbulent mixing and photodesorption. Methods. We compute the…
When a noble gas atom approaches a solid surface, it is adsorbed via the Van der Waals force, which is called physisorption. In this thesis, several experimental results concerning physisorbed atoms at surfaces are presented. First, photon…