Related papers: Carbon Fractionation in PDRs
We present a new constraint on the Galactic $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C gradient with sensitive HCO$^+$ absorption observations against strong continuum sources. The new measurements suffer less from beam dilution, optical depths, and chemical…
Measurements of the nitrogen isotopic ratio in Solar System comets show a constant value, ~140, which is three times lower than the protosolar ratio, a highly significant difference that remains unexplained. Observations of static starless…
We aim to investigate the chemistry of internal photon-dominated regions surrounding deeply embedded hypercompact and ultracompact HII regions. We search for specific tracers of this evolutionary stage of massive star formation that can be…
We report the detection of D2CO in a sample of starless dense cores, in which we previously measured the degree of CO depletion. The deuterium fractionation is found extremely high, [D2CO]/[H2CO] ~ 1-10 %, similar to that reported in…
Isotopologue abundance ratios are important to understand the evolution of astrophysical objects and ultimately the origins of a planetary system like our own. Being nitrogen a fundamental ingredient of pre-biotic material, understanding…
The mobility of lighter species on the surface of interstellar dust grains plays a crucial role in forming simple through complex molecules. Carbon monoxide is one of the most abundant molecules, its surface diffusion on the grain surface…
The transition between atomic and molecular hydrogen is associated with important changes in the structure of interstellar clouds, and marks the beginning of interstellar chemistry. Because of the relatively simple networks controlling…
We model emissivities of the HCN and CO $J=1-0$ transitions using measured properties of clouds found in normal star forming galaxies and more extreme systems. These models are compared with observations of HCN and CO $J=1-0$ transitions.…
Photon Dominated Regions (PDRs) are interfaces between the mainly ionized and mainly molecular material around young massive stars. Analysis of the physical and chemical structure of such regions traces the impact of far-ultraviolet…
The HDO/H2O ratio in interstellar gas is often used to draw conclusions on the origin of water in star-forming regions and on Earth. In cold cores and in the outer regions of protoplanetary disks, gas-phase water comes from photodesorption…
Understanding water deuterium fractionation is important for constraining the mechanisms of water formation in interstellar clouds. Observations of HDO and H$_2^{18}$O transitions were carried out towards the high-mass star-forming region…
Photodissociation regions (PDRs) define the transition zone between an ionized and a dark molecular region. They consist of neutral gas which interacts with far-ultraviolet radiation and are characterized by strong infrared line emission.…
(Abridged) We present evidence that low-mass starless cores, the simplest units of star formation, are systematically differentiated in their chemical composition. Molecules including CO and CS almost vanish near the core centers, where the…
Aiming to learn about the chemistry of the dense PDR around the ultracompact (UC) HII region in Mon R2, we have observed a series of mm-wavelength transitions of C3H2 and C2H. In addition, we have traced the distribution of other molecules,…
This work presents our theoretical study of the dissociative recombination (DR) of the closed-shell diatomic system CF$^+$ based on an approach recently applied to the CH$^+$ molecule. Our extended treatment uses the UK R-matrix theory and…
We present observations of the 3P1-3P0 fine structure transition of atomic carbon [CI], the J=3-2 transition of CO, as well as of the J=1-0 transitions of 13CO and C18O toward DR15, an HII region associated with two mid-infrared dark clouds…
We investigate the mid-infrared (IR) emission in the Orion Bar photodissociation region, using archival photometric and spectroscopic observations from UKIRT, Spitzer, ISO, and SOFIA telescopes. Specifically, we consider flux densities of…
We investigated the chemistry of nitrogen--containing species, principally isotopomers of CN, HCN, and HNC, in a sample of pre-protostellar cores. We used the IRAM 30 m telescope to measure the emission in rotational and hyperfine…
Our main purpose is to estimate the effect of assuming uniform density on the line-of-sight in PDR chemistry models, compared to a more realistic distribution for which total gas densities may well vary by several orders of magnitude. A…
Deuterated ions are abundant in cold (T=10 K), dense (n=10^5 cm^-3) regions, in which CO is frozen out onto dust grains. In such environments, the deuterium fractionation of such ions can exceed the elemental abundance ratio of D/H by a…