Chemistry in Evaporating Ices: Unexplored Territory

Abstract

We suggest that three-body chemistry may occur in warm high density gas evaporating in transient co\textendash desorption events on interstellar ices. Using a highly idealised computational model we explore the chemical conversion from simple species of the ice to more complex species containing several heavy atoms, as a function of density and of adopted three body rate coefficients. We predict that there is a wide range of densities and rate coefficients in which a significant chemical conversion may occur. We discuss the implications of this idea for the astrochemistry of hot cores.

Accepted in ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• Complex Chemistry in Star-Forming Regions: An Expanded Gas-Grain Warm-up Chemical Model
• Formation rates of complex organics in UV irradiated CH3OH-rich ices I: Experiments
• The Deep Water Abundance on Jupiter: New Constraints from Thermochemical Kinetics and Diffusion Modeling

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Episodic Explosions in Interstellar Ices
• A study of methanol and silicon monoxide production through episodic explosions of grain mantles in the Central Molecular Zone
• Towards a better understanding of ice mantle desorption by cosmic rays
• Investigating the Efficiency of Explosion Chemistry as a Source of Complex Organic Molecules in TMC-1