Related papers: Molecular complexity in the interstellar medium

The search for complex organic molecules (COMs) in the ISM has revealed chemical species of ever greater complexity. This search relies heavily on the progress made in the laboratory to characterize the rotational spectra of these…

Urea, NH2C(O)NH2, is a molecule of great importance in organic chemistry and biology. Two searches for urea in the interstellar medium were reported in the past, but neither were conclusive. We want to take advantage of the increased…

Astrochemistry aims at studying chemical processes in astronomical environments. This discipline -- located at the crossroad between astrophysics and chemistry -- is rapidly evolving and explores the issue of the formation of molecules of…

Thanks to the advent of sensitive and broad bandwidth instrumentation, complex organic molecules (COMs) have been found in a wide variety of interstellar environments, not only in our Galaxy but also in external galaxies up to a redshift of…

In the central regions of active galaxies, dense molecular medium are exposed to various types of radiation and energy injections, such as UV, X-ray, cosmic ray, and shock dissipation. With the rapid progress of chemical models and…

The main achievements, current developments and prospects of molecular studies in external galaxies are reviewed. They are put in the context of the results of several decades of studies of molecules in local interstellar medium, their…

ALMA will be able to detect a broad spectrum of molecular lines in galaxies. Current aperture synthesis observations indicate that the molecular line emission from galaxies is remarkably variable, even on kpc scales. Imaging spectroscopy at…

Determining the complexity of molecules has important applications from molecular design to understanding the history of the process that led to the formation of the molecule. Currently, it is not possible to experimentally determine,…

The properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) of the highest-redshift galaxies and quasars provide important indications of the complex interplay between the accretion of baryons onto galaxies, the physics that drives the build-up of…

Since molecules are ubiquitous in space, the study of the 'Molecular Universe' could unfold the mystery of the existing Interstellar medium. Star formation is linked to the chemical evolution processes. Thus, an analysis of the formation of…

The field of astrochemistry has seen major advances triggered by the completion of new powerful radio telescopes, with gains in sensitivity of receivers and in bandwidth. To date, about 330 molecular species are detected, in interstellar…

Up to now, mostly relatively simple molecules have been detected in interstellar diffuse molecular clouds in our galaxy, but more complex species have been reported in the diffuse/translucent medium of a z = 0.89 spiral galaxy. We aim at…

The discovery of amino acids in meteorites and the detection of glycine in samples returned from a comet to Earth suggest that the interstellar chemistry is capable of producing such complex organic molecules. Our goal is to investigate the…

The detection of a branched alkyl molecule in the high-mass star forming protocluster Sgr B2(N) permitted by the advent of ALMA revealed a new dimension of interstellar chemistry. Astrochemical simulations subsequently predicted that beyond…

Molecular complexity builds up at each step of the Sun-like star formation process, starting from simple molecules and ending up in large polyatomic species. Complex organic molecules (COMs; such as methyl formate, HCOOCH$_3$, dymethyl…

The interstellar medium (ISM) is a key ingredient in galaxy formation and evolution as it provides the molecular gas reservoir which fuels star formation and supermassive black hole accretion. Yet the ISM is one of the least studied aspects…

ALMA is revolutionizing the way we study and understand the astrophysics of galaxies, both as a whole and individually. By exploiting its unique sensitivity and resolution to make spatially and spectrally resolved images of the gas and dust…

Formation processes of high-mass stars have been long-standing issues in astronomy and astrophysics. This is mainly because of major difficulties in observational studies such as a smaller number of high-mass young stellar objects (YSOs),…

Star-forming regions show a rich and varied chemistry, including the presence of complex organic molecules - both in the cold gas distributed on large scales, and in the hot regions close to young stars where protoplanetary disks arise.…

We used ALMA to perform a line survey of the high-mass star forming region Sgr B2(N), called ReMoCA. We modeled under the assumption of LTE the spectra obtained toward the sources embedded in the secondary hot core Sgr B2(N2). We compared…