Related papers: Hunt for cold H2 molecules
Low-metallicity dwarf galaxies often show no or little CO emission, despite the intense star formation observed in local samples. Both simulations and resolved observations indicate that molecular gas in low-metallicity galaxies may reside…
The abundance of H2 in molecular clouds, relative to the commonly used tracer CO, has only been measured toward a few embedded stars, which may be surrounded by atypical gas. We present observations of near-infrared absorption by H2, CO,…
Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. Since this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of…
High-Velocity Clouds (HVCs) have radial velocities that cannot be explained by the global Galactic rotation; their distances remain mostly unknown, and their true nature and origin are still a mystery. Some of them could be of galactic…
The latest ALMA and JWST observations provide new information on the birth and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe, at the epoch of reionization. Of particular importance are measurements at redshift $ z > 5$ of their cold-gas…
The recent observations of microlensing events in the LMC by the MACHO and EROS collaborations suggest that an important fraction of the galactic halo is in the form of Massive Halo Objects (MHO) of about 0.1 M_{\odot}. Here, we argue that…
It is now well known that a primordial chemistry, involving light elements produced during the nucleosynthesis period, might develop during the hydrogen post-recombination era. In particular, molecular ions and primordial molecules such as…
We have mapped the CO(3-2) line emission from several nearby galaxies, using the Heinrich-Hertz-Telescope. Our investigation includes twelve galaxies of various types and in different stages of star forming activity. The main results of…
We investigate the formation of molecular hydrogen (H_2) in a primordial H+He gas cloud irradiated by a power-law UV flux. We find that at high densities (>1 cm^{-3}) and low temperatures (<10^4 K), the background radiation enhances the…
Cosmic gas makes up about 90% of baryonic matter in the Universe and H$_2$ is the closest molecule to star formation. In this work we study cold neutral gas and its H$_2$ component at different epochs, exploiting state-of-the-art…
There is a robust polyatomic chemistry in diffuse, partially-molecular interstellar gas that is readily accessible in absorption at radio/mm/sub-mm wavelengths. Accurate column densities are derived owing to the weak internal excitation, so…
Molecular hydrogen is the most abundant molecule in the universe. It is the first one to form and survive photo-dissociation in tenuous environments. Its formation involves catalytic reactions on the surface of interstellar grains. The…
We present an analysis of archival ISO observations of pure-rotational lines of H2 in three pointings in the central 3 parsecs of the Galaxy: toward the Southwest region and Northeast region of the Galactic center Circumnuclear Disk, and…
Cold hydrogen gas is the raw fuel for star formation in galaxies, and its partition into atomic and molecular phases is a key quantity for galaxy evolution. In this Letter, we combine Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and Arecibo…
We study formation of molecules in primordial prestellar clumps and evaluate the line luminosities to assess detectability by next-generation facilities. If the initial H_2 fraction is sufficiently high, HD becomes an important coolant in…
The mass of molecular gas in an interstellar cloud is often measured using line emission from low rotational levels of CO, which are sensitive to the CO mass, and then scaling to the assumed molecular hydrogen H_2 mass. However, a…
CO line emission represents the most accessible and widely used tracer of the molecular interstellar medium. This renders the translation of observed CO intensity into total H2 gas mass critical to understand star formation and the…
More than 90% of matter in the Universe could be composed of heavy particles, which were non-relativistic, or 'cold', when they froze-out from the primordial soup. I will review current searches for these hypothetical particles, both via…
Galaxies in Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs) are believed to experience morphological transformations from blue, star-forming galaxies to red, early-type galaxies. Galaxies with a high ratio between the luminosities of the warm H2 to the 7.7mu…
Stars form in cold clouds of predominantly molecular (H2) gas. We are just beginning to understand how the formation, properties, and destruction of these clouds varies across the universe. In this chapter, we describe how the thermal line…