Related papers: UCLCHEM: A Gas-Grain Chemical Code
Many species of complex organic molecules (COMs) have been observed in several astrophysical environments but it is not clear how they are produced, particularly in cold, quiescent regions. One process that has been proposed as a means to…
(Abridged) The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Milky Way exhibits extreme conditions, including high gas densities, elevated temperatures, enhanced cosmic-ray ionization rates, and large-scale dynamics. Large-scale molecular surveys…
Shocks are a crucial probe for understanding the ongoing chemistry within ices on interstellar dust grains where many complex organic molecules (COMs) are believed to be formed. However, previous work has been limited to the initial…
Complex organic molecules (COMs), the building blocks of life, have been extensively detected under various physical conditions, from quiescent clouds to star-forming regions. They therefore serve as excellent tracers for the local physical…
The physical conditions in a collapsing cloud can be traced by observations of molecular lines. To correctly interpret these observations the abundance distributions of the observed species need to be derived. The chemistry in a collapsing…
We present the publicly available, open source code UCLCHEMCMC, designed to estimate physical parameters of an observed cloud of gas by combining Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) sampling with chemical and radiative transfer modeling. When…
Understanding the chemical evolution in star-forming cores is a necessary pre-condition to correctly assess physical conditions when using molecular emission. We follow the evolution of chemistry and molecular line profiles through the…
A gas-grain time dependent chemical code, UCL\_CHEM, has been used to investigate the possibility of using chemical tracers to differentiate between the possible formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs. In this work, we model the formation of…
A magnetohydrodynamic model of a steady, transverse C-type shock in a dense molecular cloud is presented. A complete gas-grain chemical network is taken into account: the gas-phase chemistry, the adsorption of gas species on dust grains,…
Glycolaldehyde (HOCH$_2$CHO) and ethylene glycol ((CH$_2$OH)$_2$) are two complex organic molecules detected in the hot cores and hot corinos of several star-forming regions. The ethylene glycol/glycolaldehyde abundance ratio seems to show…
Combining the co-evolving chemistry, hydrodynamics and radiative transfer is an important step for star formation studies. It allows both a better link to observations and a self-consistent monitoring of the magnetic dissipation in the…
We discuss recent models of chemical evolution in the developing and collapsing protostellar envelopes associated with low-mass star formation. In particular, the effects of depletion of gas-phase molecules onto grain surfaces is…
Abridged: We detail and benchmark two sophisticated chemical models developed by the Heidelberg and Bordeaux astrochemistry groups. The main goal of this study is to elaborate on a few well-described tests for state-of-the-art astrochemical…
Aims: Accretion rates in low-mass protostars can be highly variable in time. Each accretion burst is accompanied by a temporary increase in luminosity, heating up the circumstellar envelope and altering the chemical composition of the gas…
Aims: The physical structure of a shock wave may take a form unique to its shock type, implying that the chemistry of each shock type is unique as well. We aim to investigate the different chemistries of J-type and C-type shocks in order to…
The molecular evolution that occurs in collapsing prestellar cores is investigated. To model the dynamics, we adopt the Larson-Penston (L-P) solution and analogues with slower rates of collapse. For the chemistry, we utilize the new…
The feasibility of contemporary gas-grain astrochemical models depends on the availability of accurate kinetics data, in particular, for surface processes. We study the sensitivity of gas-grain chemical models to the energy barrier Ea of…
Aims. The goal of the paper is to present a detailed study of the propagation of low velocity (5 to 25 km s-1) stationary molecular shocks in environments illuminated by an external ultraviolet (UV) radiation field. In particular, we intend…
We develop analytic approximations to the density evolution of prestellar cores, based on the results of hydrodynamical simulations. We use these approximations as input for a time-dependent gas-grain chemical code to investigate the…
Understanding the gas abundance distribution is essential when tracing star formation using molecular line observations. Changing density and temperature conditions cause gas to freeze-out onto dust grains, and this needs to be taken into…