Related papers: Oxygen fractionation in dense molecular clouds
Atomic ions are mostly neutralized by small grains (or PAH molecules) in current theories of heating and cooling in cool diffuse clouds; in the main they do not recombine with free electrons. This alters the ionization balance by depressing…
A number of objects in primitive meteorites have oxygen isotopic compositions that place them on a distinct, mass-independent fractionation line with a slope of one on a three-isotope plot. The most popular model for describing how this…
The elemental depletion of interstellar sulfur from the gas phase has been a recurring challenge for astrochemical models. Observations show that sulfur remains relatively non-depleted with respect to its cosmic value throughout the diffuse…
We investigated the chemical evolutions of gas phase and grain surface species across the Taurus molecular cloud-1 (TMC-1) filament from translucent phase to dense phase. By comparing observations with modeling results from an up-to-date…
Clouds of high infrared extinction are promising sites of massive star/cluster formation. A large number of cloud cores discovered in recent years allows investigation of possible evolutionary sequence among cores in early phases. We have…
The general lack of molecular oxygen in molecular clouds is an outstanding problem in astrochemistry. Extensive searches with SWAS, Odin and Herschel have only produced two detections; upper limits to the O_2 abundance in the remaining…
The formation of organic compounds is generally assumed to result from abiotic processes in the Solar System, with the exception of biogenic organics on Earth. Nitrogen-bearing organics are of particular interest, notably for prebiotic…
We investigate the chemical and observational implications of repetitive transient dense core formation in molecular clouds. We allow a transient density fluctuation to form and disperse over a period of 1 Myr, tracing its chemical…
GEMS is an IRAM 30m Large Program whose aim is determining the elemental depletions and the ionization fraction in a set of prototypical star-forming regions. This paper presents the first results from the prototypical dark cloud TMC 1.…
The precipitation of cloud particles in brown dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres establishes an ongoing downward flux of condensable elements. To understand the efficiency of cloud formation, it is therefore crucial to quantify the…
We show analytically that large abundances of NH2D and NHD2 can be produced by gas phase chemistry in the interiors of cold dense clouds. The calculated fractionation ratios are in good agreement with the values that have been previously…
Despite low elemental abundance of atomic deuterium in interstellar medium (ISM), observational evidences suggest that several species in gas-phase and in ices could be heavily fractionated. We explore various aspects of deuterium…
Grain-grain processing has been shown to be an indispensable ingredient of shock modelling in high density environments. For densities higher than \sim10^5 cm-3, shattering becomes a self-enhanced process that imposes severe chemical and…
Recent observations with the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite indicate abundances of gaseous H2O and O2 in dense molecular clouds which are significantly lower than found in standard homogeneous chemistry models. We present here…
We have extensively mapped a sample of dense molecular clouds (L1512, TMC-1C, L1262, Per 7, L1389, L1251E) in lines of HC3N, CH3OH, SO and C^{18}O. We demonstrate that a high degree of chemical differentiation is present in all of the…
We present synthetic line observations of a simulated molecular cloud, utilising a self-consistent treatment of the dynamics and time-dependent chemical evolution. We investigate line emission from the three most common CO isotopologues…
Context. The chemistry of the diffuse interstellar medium rests upon three pillars: exothermic ion-neutral reactions (" cold chemistry "), endothermic neutral-neutral reactions with significant activation barriers (" warm chemistry "), and…
Molecular oxygen has been the subject of many observational searches as chemical models predicted it to be a reservoir of oxygen. Although it has been detected in two regions of the interstellar medium, its rarity is a challenge for…
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…
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,…