Astrochemistry

A New Method for Simulating Photoprocesses in Astrochemical Models

By Keith Cowing

astro-ph.GA

January 5, 2021

Filed under astrochemistry

A New Method for Simulating Photoprocesses in Astrochemical Models — Calculated abundances of O3 vs. photon fluence in a UV-irradiated pure O2 ice (shown in blue), with corresponding experimental data from Gerakines et al. (1996) (shown in red). The values shown in Table 2 were used for branching ratios and cross sections. No error bars were reported in this study.

We propose a new model for treating solid-phase photoprocesses in interstellar ice analogues. In this approach, photoionization and photoexcitation are included in more detail, and the production of electronically-excited (suprathermal) species is explicitly considered.

In addition, we have included non-thermal, non-diffusive chemistry to account for the low-temperature characteristic of cold cores. As an initial test of our method, we have simulated two previous experimental studies involving the UV irradiation of pure solid O2. In contrast to previous solid-state astrochemical model calculations which have used gas-phase photoabsorption cross-sections, we have employed solid-state cross-sections in our calculations.

This method allows the model to be tested using well-constrained experiments rather than poorly constrained gas-phase abundances in ISM regions. Our results indicate that inclusion of non-thermal reactions and suprathermal species allows for reproduction of low-temperature solid-phase photoprocessing that simulate interstellar ices within cold (∼ 10 K) dense cores such as TMC-1.

Ella Mullikin, Hannah Anderson, Natalie O’Hern, Megan Farrah, Christopher R. Arumainayagam, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Perry A. Gerakines, Liton Majumdar, Paola Caselli, Christopher N. Shingledecker
Comments: ApJ, accepted: 15 pages, 3 figures
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2101.01209 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2101.01209v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
Submission history
From: Christopher Shingledecker
[v1] Mon, 4 Jan 2021 19:38:45 UTC (695 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.01209
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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