The Effect of an Inert Solid Reservoir on Molecular Abundances in Dense Interstellar Clouds

The question, what is the role of freeze-out of chemical species in determining the molecular abundances in the interstellar gas is a matter of debate. We investigate a theoretical case of a dense interstellar molecular cloud core by time-dependent modeling of chemical kinetics, where grain surface...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kalvāns Juris, Shmeld Ivar
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2012-12-01
Series:Open Astronomy
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/astro-2017-0402
Description
Summary:The question, what is the role of freeze-out of chemical species in determining the molecular abundances in the interstellar gas is a matter of debate. We investigate a theoretical case of a dense interstellar molecular cloud core by time-dependent modeling of chemical kinetics, where grain surface reactions deliberately are not included. That means, the gas-phase and solid-phase abundances are influenced only by gas reactions, accretion on grains and desorption. We compare the results to a reference model where no accretion occurs, and only gas-phase reactions are included. We can trace that the purely physical processes of molecule accretion and desorption have major chemical consequences on the gas-phase chemistry. The main effect of introduction of the gas-grain interaction is long-term molecule abundance changes that come nowhere near an equilibrium during the typical lifetime of a prestellar core.
ISSN:2543-6376