RESUMEN
Most low-mass stars form in stellar clusters that also contain massive stars, which are sources of far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation. Theoretical models predict that this FUV radiation produces photodissociation regions (PDRs) on the surfaces of protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars, which affects planet formation within the disks. We report James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations of a FUV-irradiated protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula. Emission lines are detected from the PDR; modeling their kinematics and excitation allowed us to constrain the physical conditions within the gas. We quantified the mass-loss rate induced by the FUV irradiation and found that it is sufficient to remove gas from the disk in less than a million years. This is rapid enough to affect giant planet formation in the disk.
RESUMEN
Forty years ago, it was proposed that gas-phase organic chemistry in the interstellar medium can be initiated by the methyl cation CH3+ (refs. 1-3), but so far it has not been observed outside the Solar System4,5. Alternative routes involving processes on grain surfaces have been invoked6,7. Here we report James Webb Space Telescope observations of CH3+ in a protoplanetary disk in the Orion star-forming region. We find that gas-phase organic chemistry is activated by ultraviolet irradiation.
RESUMEN
The collisions between high-energy ions and solids can result in significant physical and chemical changes to the material. These effects are potentially important for better understanding the chemistry of interstellar and planetary bodies, which are exposed to cosmic radiation and the solar wind, respectively; however, modeling such collisions on a detailed microscopic basis has thus far been largely unsuccessful. To that end, a new model, entitled CIRIS: the Chemistry of Ionizing Radiation in Solids, was created to calculate the physical and chemical effects of the irradiation of solid materials. With the new code, we simulate O2 ice irradiated with 100 keV protons. Our models are able to reproduce the measured ozone abundances of a previous experimental study, as well as independently predict the approximate thickness of the ice used in that work.
RESUMEN
We present the first detection of gas phase S2H in the Horsehead, a moderately UV-irradiated nebula. This confirms the presence of doubly sulfuretted species in the interstellar medium and opens a new challenge for sulfur chemistry. The observed S2H abundance is ~5×10-11, only a factor 4-6 lower than that of the widespread H2S molecule. H2S and S2H are efficiently formed on the UV-irradiated icy grain mantles. We performed ice irradiation experiments to determine the H2S and S2H photodesorption yields. The obtained values are ~1.2×10-3 and <1×10-5 molecules per incident photon for H2S and S2H, respectively. Our upper limit to the S2H photodesorption yield suggests that photo-desorption is not a competitive mechanism to release the S2H molecules to the gas phase. Other desorption mechanisms such as chemical desorption, cosmic-ray desorption and grain shattering can increase the gaseous S2H abundance to some extent. Alternatively, S2H can be formed via gas phase reactions involving gaseous H2S and the abundant ions S+ and SH+. The detection of S2H in this nebula could be therefore the result of the coexistence of an active grain surface chemistry and gaseous photo-chemistry.
RESUMEN
Nitrogen hydrides are at the root of the nitrogen chemistry in interstellar space. The detailed modeling of their gas phase formation, however, requires the knowledge of nuclear-spin branching ratios for chemical reactions involving multiprotonated species. We investigate in this work the nuclear-spin selection rules in both exothermic and near thermoneutral ionmolecule reactions involved in the synthesis of ammonia, assuming full scrambling of protons in the reaction complexes. The formalism of Oka [ J. Mol. Spectrosc. 2004, 228, 635] is employed for highly exothermic ionmolecule and dissociative recombination reactions. For thermoneutral reactions, a simple state-to-state statistical approach is suggested, which is in qualitative agreement with both quantum scattering and microcanonical statistical calculations. This model is applied to the seven atom reaction NH4(+) + H2, of possible importance in the nuclear-spin thermalization of ammonia.
