Related papers: Complete Depletion in prestellar cores
The freezeout of gas-phase species onto cold dust grains can drastically alter the chemistry and the heating-cooling balance of protostellar material. In contrast to well-known species such as carbon monoxide (CO), the freezeout of various…
Context: The study of dust emission at millimeter wavelengths is important to shed light on the dust properties and physical structure of pre-stellar cores, the initial conditions in the process of star and planet formation. Aims: Using two…
Recent observations indicate that organic molecules are prevalent towards starless and prestellar cores. Deuteration of these molecules has not been well-studied during the starless phase. Published observations of singly-deuterated…
High degrees of deuterium fractionation are commonly found in cold prestellar cores and in the envelopes around young protostars. As it brings strong constraints to chemical models, deuterium chemistry is often used to infer core history or…
We use spectra and maps of NH2D, ND2H, and ND3, obtained with the CSO, IRAM 30m and Arecibo telescopes, to study deuteration processes in dense cores. The data include the first detection of the hyperfine structure of ND2H. The emission of…
Interstellar dark clouds are the sites of star formation. Their main component, dihydrogen, exists under two states, ortho and para. H2 is supposed to form in the ortho:para ratio (OPR) of 3:1 and to subsequently decay to almost pure…
We used the APEX telescope to observe the 372 GHz o-H$_2$D$^+(J_{K_a,\,K_c}=1_{1,\,0}-1_{1,\,1})$ line towards three prestellar cores and three protostellar cores in Orion B9. We also employed our previous APEX observations of C$^{17}$O,…
We investigate deuterium chemistry coupled with the nuclear spin-state chemistry of H$_2$ and H$_3^+$ in protoplanetary disks. Multiple paths of deuterium fractionation are found; exchange reactions with D atoms, such as HCO$^+$ + D, are…
We determined the ortho/para (o/p) ratios of NH2D and NHD2 in the archetypical pre-stellar core L1544. The core was observed in the two lowest rotational lines of ortho- and para-NH2D using the APEX and the IRAM 30 m telescopes. The…
The presence of H2D+ in dense cloud cores underlies ion-molecule reactions that strongly enhance the deuterium fractionation of many molecular species. We determine the H2D+ abundance in one starless core, Barnard 68, that has a…
The L1544 pre-stellar core was observed as part of the ASAI (Astrochemical Surveys At IRAM) Large Program. We report the first detection in a pre-stellar core of the HCNH$^+$ and HC$_3$NH$^+$ ions. The high spectral resolution of the…
Deuterium fractionation provides a key diagnostic of the physical and chemical evolution of prestellar and protostellar cores, where it is strongly linked to CO depletion in cold, dense gas. We present the first spatially resolved maps of…
We are carrying out a physical and chemical study of the protostellar envelopes in a representative sample of IM Class 0 protostars. In our first paper (Crimier et al. 2010), we determined the physical structure (density-temperature radial…
Pre-stellar cores represent a critical evolutionary phase in low-mass star formation. We aim to unveil the detailed thermal structure and density distribution of three early-stage cores, starless core L1517B, and prestellar core L694-2 and…
The depletion of elements onto dust grains is characterized using a generalized depletion strength $F_*$ for any sightline, and trend-line parameters $A_X, B_X$ and $z_X$. The parameters $A_X, B_X$ and $z_X$ define the relative depletion…
H2D+ is a primary ion which dominates the gas-phase chemistry of cold dense gas. Therefore it is hailed as a unique tool in probing the earliest, prestellar phase of star formation. Observationally, its abundance and distribution is however…
Probing the gas and dust in proto-planetary disks is central for understanding the process of planet formation. In disks surrounding solar type protostars, the bulk of the disk mass resides in the outer midplane, which is cold ($\leq$20 K),…
Aims. We measure the deuterium fraction, RD, and the CO-depletion factor, fd, toward a number of starless and protostellar cores in the L1688 region of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud complex and search for variations based upon environmental…
Samples of pristine Solar System material found in meteorites and interplanetary dust particles are highly enriched in (15)N. Conspicuous nitrogen isotopic anomalies have also been measured in comets, and the (14)N/(15)N abundance ratio of…
Understanding the chemical processes during starless core and prestellar core evolution is an important step in understanding the initial stages of star and disk formation. This project is a study of deuterated ammonia, o-NH$_2$D, in the…