Astrochemistry: October 2019

Phosphorus-bearing species are an essential key to form life on Earth, however they have barely been detected in the interstellar medium. Since only PN and PO have been identified so far towards star-forming regions, the chemical formation pathways of P-bearing molecules are not easy to constrain and are thus highly debatable.

To understand the role that planet formation history has on the observable atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) we have produced a population of astrochemically evolving protoplanetary disks.

Grain surfaces play a central role in the formation and desorption of molecules in space. To form molecules on a grain surface, adsorbed species trapped in binding sites must be mobile and migrate to adjacent sites.

We investigated the chemical evolution of HC₃N in six dense molecular clouds, using archival available data from the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL) and the Millimeter Astronomy Legacy Team Survey at 90 GHz (MALT90).

Zeroth moment maps of some simple molecules, and selected transitions of COMs.

We present an observational study of the sulfur (S)-bearing species towards Orion KL at 1.3 mm by combining ALMA and IRAM-30m single-dish data.

Phosphorus is a key ingredient in terrestrial biochemistry, but is rarely observed in the molecular ISM and therefore little is known about how it is inherited during the star and planet formation sequence.

The investigation of star forming regions have enormously benefited from the recent advent of the ALMA interferometer.

Effective deposition velocities in the converged atmosphere-ocean chemistry solutions. Solid lines are from the Sun-like star cases, and dashed lines are from the GJ 876 cases. The effective deposition velocities are self-consistently calculated, and are different from case to case.

The composition of comets in the solar system come in multiple groups thought to encode information about their formation in different regions o fthe outer protosolar disk.

The goal of this research is to study how the fragmentation of planetary embryos can affect the physical and dynamical properties of terrestrial planets around solar-type stars.

We study the effects of grain surface reactions on the chemistry of protoplanetary disks where gas, ice surface layers and icy mantles of dust grains are considered as three distinct phases.