scholarly journals Molecule Formation in External Galaxies

1992 ◽  
Vol 150 ◽  
pp. 121-126
Author(s):  
T J Millar ◽  
E. Herbst

We discuss the parameters needed to model chemistry in extragalactic clouds. While density and temperature can be constrained by multiline observations, molecular abundances may be severely affected by the adopted elemental abundances. While the observations of the Magelllanic Clouds can be reasonably interpreted in terms of dark cloud models, molecular gas in starburst galaxies could well be dominated by photoeffects. The detection of deuterium in extragalactic molecules would provide a valuable diagnostic.

2019 ◽  
Vol 624 ◽  
pp. A108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob C. Laas ◽  
Paola Caselli

Context. 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 and translucent stages of an interstellar molecular cloud, but its atomic and molecular gas-phase constituents cannot account for this cosmic value toward lines of sight containing higher-density environments. Aims. We have attempted to address this issue by modeling the evolution of an interstellar cloud from its pristine state as a diffuse atomic cloud to a molecular environment of much higher density, using a gas-grain astrochemical code and an enhanced sulfur reaction network. Methods. A common gas-grain astrochemical reaction network has been systematically updated and greatly extended based on previous literature and previous sulfur models, with a focus on the grain chemistry and processes. A simple astrochemical model was used to benchmark the resulting network updates, and the results of the model were compared to typical astronomical observations sourced from the literature. Results. Our new gas-grain astrochemical model is able to reproduce the elemental depletion of sulfur, whereby sulfur can be depleted from the gas-phase by two orders of magnitude, and that this process may occur under dark cloud conditions if the cloud has a chemical age of at least 106 years. The resulting mix of sulfur-bearing species on the grain ranges across all the most common chemical elements (H/C/N/O), not dissimilar to the molecules observed in cometary environments. Notably, this mixture is not dominated simply by H2S, unlike all other current astrochemical models. Conclusions. Despite our relatively simple physical model, most of the known gas-phase S-bearing molecular abundances are accurately reproduced under dense conditions, however they are not expected to be the primary molecular sinks of sulfur. Our model predicts that most of the “missing” sulfur is in the form of organo-sulfur species that are trapped on grains.


2000 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 393-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Ciardi ◽  
Charles E. Woodward ◽  
Dan P. Clemens ◽  
David E. Harker ◽  
Richard J. Rudy

1997 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
D. Lutz ◽  
R. Genzel ◽  
E. Sturm ◽  
A.F.M. Moorwood ◽  
E. Oliva ◽  
...  

AbstractWe discuss 2.5–45 µm spectra of the Circinus galaxy and of Cen A, obtained with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared Space Observatory. The large number of detected ionic fine structure lines, observable also in visually obscured sources, provides strong constraints on the shape of the ionizing spectrum, which is found to exhibit a UV bump peaking at ~ 70 eV in the case of Circinus. Pure rotational emission of molecular hydrogen, directly probing warm molecular gas, can for the first time be detected in external galaxies.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Muehle ◽  
Ernest R. Seaquist ◽  
Christian Henkel

2020 ◽  
Vol 635 ◽  
pp. A131 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. P. Israel

We present ground-based measurements of 126 nearby galaxy centers in 12CO and 92 in 13CO in various low-J transitions. More than 60 galaxies were measured in at least four lines. The average relative intensities of the first four J 12CO transitions are 1.00:0.92:0.70:0.57. In the first three J transitions, the average 12CO-to-13CO intensity ratios are 13.0, 11.6, and 12.8, with individual values in any transition ranging from 5 to 25. The sizes of central CO concentrations are well defined in maps, but poorly determined by multi-aperture photometry. On average, the J = 1−0 12CO fluxes increase linearly with the size of the observing beam. CO emission covers only a quarter of the HI galaxy disks. Using radiative transfer models (RADEX), we derived model gas parameters. The assumed carbon elemental abundances and carbon gas depletion onto dust are the main causes of uncertainty. The new CO data and published [CI] and [CII] data imply that CO, C°, and C+ each represent about one-third of the gas-phase carbon in the molecular interstellar medium. The mean beam-averaged molecular hydrogen column density is N(H2) = (1.5 ± 0.2)×1021 cm−2. Galaxy center CO-to-H2 conversion factors are typically ten times lower than the “standard” Milky Way X° disk value, with a mean X(CO) = (1.9 ± 0.2)×1019 cm−2/K km s−1 and a dispersion 1.7. The corresponding [CI]-H2 factor is five times higher than X(CO), with X[CI] = (9 ± 2)×1019 cm−2/K km s−1. No unique conversion factor can be determined for [CII]. The low molecular gas content of galaxy centers relative to their CO intensities is explained in roughly equal parts by high central gas-phase carbon abundances, elevated gas temperatures, and large gas velocity dispersions relative to the corresponding values in galaxy disks.


Author(s):  
M. B. Areal ◽  
S. Paron ◽  
M. E. Ortega ◽  
L. Duvidovich

Abstract Nowadays, there are several observational studies about the 13CO/C18O abundance ratio ( $X^{13/18}$ ) towards nearby molecular clouds. These works give observational support to the C18O selective photodissociation due to the interaction between the far ultraviolet (FUV) radiation and the molecular gas. It is necessary to increase the sample of molecular clouds located at different distances and affected in different ways by nearby or embedded H ii regions and OB associations to study the selective photodissociation. Using 12CO, 13CO, and C18O J = 1–0 data obtained from the FOREST unbiased Galactic plane imaging survey performed with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope, we analyse the filamentary infrared dark cloud IRDC $34.43+0.24$ located at the distance of about 3.9 kpc. This infrared dark cloud (IRDC) is related to several H ii regions and young stellar objects. Assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium, we obtain: $0.8 \times 10^{16} <$ N(13CO) $<4 \times 10^{17}$ cm–2 (average value $= 4.2 \times 10^{16}$ cm–2), $0.6 \times 10^{15} <$ N(C18O) $<4.4 \times 10^{16}$ cm–2 (average value $= 5.0 \times 10^{15}$ cm–2), and 3 $<$ $X^{13/18}$ $<$ 30 (average $= 8$ ) across the whole IRDC. Larger values of $X^{13/18}$ were found towards portions of the cloud related to the H ii regions associated with the N61 and N62 bubbles and with the photodissociation regions, precisely the regions in which FUV photons are strongly interacting with the molecular gas. Our result represents an observational support to the C18O selectively photodissociation phenomenon occurring in a quite distant filamentary IRDC. Additionally, based on IR data from the Hi-GAL survey, the FUV radiation field was estimated in Habing units, and the dust temperature (T $_{dust}$ ) and H2 column density (N(H2)) distribution were studied. Using the average of N(H2), values in close agreement with the ‘canonical’ abundance ratios [H2]/[13CO] and [H2]/[C18O] were derived. However, the obtained ranges in the abundance ratios show that if an accurate analysis of the molecular gas is required, the use of the ‘canonical’ values may introduce some bias. Thus, it is important to consider how the gas is irradiated by the FUV photons across the molecular cloud. The analysis of $X^{13/18}$ is a good tool to perform that. Effects of beam dilution and clumpiness were studied.


2019 ◽  
Vol 625 ◽  
pp. A147 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Agúndez ◽  
N. Marcelino ◽  
J. Cernicharo ◽  
E. Roueff ◽  
M. Tafalla

An exhaustive chemical characterization of dense cores is mandatory to our understanding of chemical composition changes from a starless to a protostellar stage. However, only a few sources have had their molecular composition characterized in detail. Here we present a λ 3 mm line survey of L483, a dense core around a Class 0 protostar, which was observed with the IRAM 30 m telescope in the 80–116 GHz frequency range. We detected 71 molecules (140 including different isotopologs), most of which are present in the cold and quiescent ambient cloud according to their narrow lines (FWHM ~ 0.5 km s−1) and low rotational temperatures (≲10 K). Of particular interest among the detected molecules are the cis isomer of HCOOH, the complex organic molecules HCOOCH3, CH3OCH3, and C2H5OH, a wide variety of carbon chains, nitrogen oxides like N2O, and saturated molecules like CH3SH, in addition to eight new interstellar molecules (HCCO, HCS, HSC, NCCNH+, CNCN, NCO, H2NCO+, and NS+) whose detection has already been reported. In general, fractional molecular abundances in L483 are systematically lower than in TMC-1 (especially for carbon chains), tend to be higher than in L1544 and B1-b, and are similar to those in L1527. Apart from the overabundance of carbon chains in TMC-1, we find that L483 does not have a marked chemical differentiation with respect to starless/prestellar cores like TMC-1 and L1544, although it does chemically differentiate from Class 0 hot corino sources like IRAS 16293−2422. This fact suggests that the chemical composition of the ambient cloud of some Class 0 sources could be largely inherited from the dark cloud starless/prestellar phase. We explore the use of potential chemical evolutionary indicators, such as the HNCO/C3S, SO2/C2S, and CH3SH/C2S ratios, to trace the prestellar/protostellar transition. We also derived isotopic ratios for a variety of molecules, many of which show isotopic ratios close to the values for the local interstellar medium (remarkably all those involving 34S and 33S), while there are also several isotopic anomalies like an extreme depletion in 13C for one of the two isotopologs of c-C3H2, a drastic enrichment in 18O for SO and HNCO (SO being also largely enriched in 17O), and different abundances for the two 13C substituted species of C2H and the two 15N substituted species of N2H+. We report the first detection in space of some minor isotopologs like c-C3D. The exhaustive chemical characterization of L483 presented here, together with similar studies of other prestellar and protostellar sources, should allow us to identify the main factors that regulate the chemical composition of cores along the process of formation of low-mass protostars.


1994 ◽  
Vol 429 ◽  
pp. 694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. Lada ◽  
Elizabeth A. Lada ◽  
Dan P. Clemens ◽  
John Bally

2019 ◽  
Vol 624 ◽  
pp. A23 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. P. H. Nesvadba ◽  
R. Cañameras ◽  
R. Kneissl ◽  
S. Koenig ◽  
C. Yang ◽  
...  

The bright 3P1–3P0 ([CI] 1–0) and 3P2–3P1 ([CI] 2–1) lines of atomic carbon are becoming more and more widely employed as tracers of the cold neutral gas in high-redshift galaxies. Here we present observations of these lines in the 11 galaxies of the set of Planck’s Dusty GEMS, the brightest gravitationally lensed galaxies on the extragalactic submillimeter sky probed by the Planck satellite. We have [CI] 1–0 and [CI] 2–1 measurements for seven and eight of these galaxies, respectively, including four galaxies where both lines have been measured. We use our observations to constrain the gas excitation mechanism, excitation temperatures, optical depths, atomic carbon and molecular gas masses, and carbon abundances. Ratios of LCI/LFIR are similar to those found in the local universe, and suggest that the total cooling budget through atomic carbon has not significantly changed in the last 12 Gyr. Both lines are optically thin and trace 1 − 6 × 107 M⊙ of atomic carbon. Carbon abundances, XCI, are between 2.5 and 4 × 10−5, for an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) CO-to-H2 conversion factor of αCO = 0.8 M⊙ / [K km s−1 pc2]. Ratios of molecular gas masses derived from [CI] 1–0 and CO agree within the measurement uncertainties for five galaxies, and agree to better than a factor of two for another two with [CI] 1–0 measurements, after carefully taking CO excitation into account. This does not support the idea that intense, high-redshift starburst galaxies host large quantities of “CO-dark” gas. These results support the common assumptions underlying most molecular gas mass estimates made for massive, dusty, high-redshift starburst galaxies, although the good agreement between the masses obtained with both tracers cannot be taken as independent confirmation of either αCO or XCI.


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