Related papers: Ortho-para-H$_2$ conversion processes in astrophys…
The interpretation of water line emission from existing observations and future HIFI/Herschel data requires a detailed knowledge of collisional rate coefficients. Among all relevant collisional mechanisms, the rotational (de)excitation of…
In recent decades, significant attention has been dedicated to analytical and observational studies of the atomic hydrogen (HI) to molecular hydrogen (H2) transition in the interstellar medium. We focussed on the Draco diffuse cloud to gain…
The 2.45 GHz plasma torch CO$_2\to$ CO + $\frac12$O$_2$ conversion experiment [F A D"Isa et al. Plasma Sources Sci. Technol., vol. 29 (2020) 105009] has been compared with thermo-chemical calculations. The 1.5D model of the…
This work describes experiments on thermal dynamics of pure H2O excited by hydrodynamic cavitation, which has been reported to facilitate the spin conversion of para- and ortho-isomers at water interfaces. Previous measurements by NMR and…
Hydrogen molecules (H2) come in two forms in the interstellar medium, ortho- and para-hydrogen, corresponding to the two different spin configurations of the two hydrogen atoms. The relative abundances of the two flavours in the…
CO2 is one of the dominant components of the interstellar ice. Recent observations show CO2 exists more abundantly in polar (H2O-dominated) ice than in apolar (H2O-poor) ice. CO2 ice formation is primarily attributed to the reaction between…
The dynamics of the reaction H + OH $\to$ O (3P) + H2 have been studied in a series of quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations and transition state theory (TST) methods using high quality 3A' and 3A'' potential energy surfaces (PESs).…
We present calculated rate coefficients for ro-vibrational transitions of CO in collisions with H atoms for a gas temperature range of 10 K $\leq T \leq$ 3000 K, based on the recent three-dimensional ab initio H-CO interaction potential of…
We present numerical computations and analysis of atomic to molecular (HI-to-H$_2$) transitions in cool ($\sim$100 K) low-metallicity dust-free (primordial) gas, in which molecule formation occurs via cosmic-ray driven negative ion…
We present a study of gas-phase H2O and CO2 toward a sample of 14 massive protostars with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). Modeling of the H2O spectra using a homogeneous model with a…
[Abridged] Observations of protoplanetary disks suggest that they are depleted in gas-phase CO. It has been posed that gas-phase CO is chemically consumed and converted into less volatile species through gas-grain processes. Observations of…
We discuss the ratio of ortho- to para-H2 in photodissociation regions (PDRs). We draw attention to an apparent confusion in the literature between the ortho-to-para ratio of molecules in FUV-pumped vibrationally excited states, and the H2…
We aim to constrain the kinetic temperature and H$_2$ volume density of massive star-forming clumps associated with HII regions using multiple para-H$_2$CO transitions. In addition, we investigate the interplay between ionized gas,…
Rate constants for the N + C2 reaction have been measured in a continuous supersonic flow reactor over the range 57 K to 296 K by the relative rate technique employing the N + OH - H + NO reaction as a reference. Excess concentrations of…
Rate coefficients for state-to-state rotational transitions in CO induced by both para- and ortho-H$_2$ collisions are presented. The results were obtained using the close-coupling method and the coupled-states approximation, with the…
Cross sections for the rotational (de)excitation of CO by ground state para- and ortho-H_2 are obtained using quantum scattering calculations for collision energies between 1 and 520 cm^{-1}. A new CO-H_2 potential energy surface is…
We present in this paper the main structural features and enthalpy details for the energy profiles of the title reactions, both for the exothermic (forward) path to NH$_{3}$ formation and for the endothermic (reverse) reaction to…
We have studied the evolution of molecular gas during the early stages of protostellar collapse. In addition to allowing for the freeze out of `heavy' species on to grains, we have computed the variation of population densities of the…
We present Herschel/HIFI observations of the fundamental rotational transitions of ortho- and para-H$_2^{16}$O and H$_2^{18}$O in absorption towards Sagittarius~B2(M) and W31C. The ortho/para ratio in water in the foreground clouds on the…
The formation of interstellar water has been commonly accepted to occur on the surfaces of icy dust grains in dark molecular clouds at low temperatures (10-20 K), involving hydrogenation reactions of oxygen allotropes. As a result of the…