Formation rates of complex organics in UV irradiated CH3OH-rich ices I: Experiments

(Abridged) Gas-phase complex organic molecules are commonly detected in the warm inner regions of protostellar envelopes. Recent models show that photochemistry in ices followed by desorption may explain the observed abundances. This study aims to experimentally quantify the broad-band UV-induced production rates of complex organics in CH3OH-rich ices at 20-70 K under ultra-high vacuum conditions. The reaction products are mainly identified by RAIRS and TPD experiments. Complex organics are readily formed in all experiments, both during irradiation and during a slow warm-up of the ices to 200 K after the UV lamp is turned off. The relative abundances of photoproducts depend on the UV fluence, the ice temperature, and whether pure CH3OH ice or CH3OH:CH4/CO ice mixtures are used. C2H6, CH3CHO, CH3CH2OH, CH3OCH3, HCOOCH3, HOCH2CHO and (CH2OH)2 are all detected in at least one experiment. The derived product-formation yields and their dependences on different experimental parameters, such as the initial ice composition, are used to estimate the CH3OH photodissociation branching ratios in ice and the relative diffusion barriers of the formed radicals. The experiments show that ice photochemistry in CH3OH ices is efficient enough to explain the observed abundances of complex organics around protostars and that ratios of complex molecules can be used to constrain their formation pathway.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 65 pages including appendice

Dissociating task difficulty from incongruence in face-voice emotion integration

In the everyday environment, affective information is conveyed by both the face and the voice. Studies have demonstrated that a concurrently presented voice can alter the way that an emotional face expression is perceived, and vice versa, leading to emotional conflict if the information in the two modalities is mismatched. Additionally, evidence suggests that incongruence of emotional valence activates cerebral networks involved in conflict monitoring and resolution. However, it is currently unclear whether this is due to task difficulty—that incongruent stimuli are harder to categorize—or simply to the detection of mismatching information in the two modalities. The aim of the present fMRI study was to examine the neurophysiological correlates of processing incongruent emotional information, independent of task difficulty. Subjects were scanned while judging the emotion of face-voice affective stimuli. Both the face and voice were parametrically morphed between anger and happiness and then paired in all audiovisual combinations, resulting in stimuli each defined by two separate values: the degree of incongruence between the face and voice, and the degree of clarity of the combined face-voice information. Due to the specific morphing procedure utilized, we hypothesized that the clarity value, rather than incongruence value, would better reflect task difficulty. Behavioral data revealed that participants integrated face and voice affective information, and that the clarity, as opposed to incongruence value correlated with categorization difficulty. Cerebrally, incongruence was more associated with activity in the superior temporal region, which emerged after task difficulty had been accounted for. Overall, our results suggest that activation in the superior temporal region in response to incongruent information cannot be explained simply by task difficulty, and may rather be due to detection of mismatching information between the two modalities

Star formation in Chamaeleon I and III: a molecular line study of the starless core population

The Chamaeleon clouds are excellent targets for low-mass star formation studies. Cha I and II are actively forming stars while Cha III shows no sign of ongoing star formation. We aim to determine the driving factors that have led to the very different levels of star formation activity in Cha I and III and examine the dynamical state and possible evolution of the starless cores within them. Observations were performed in various molecular transitions with APEX and Mopra. Five cores are gravitationally bound in Cha I and one in Cha III. The infall signature is seen toward 8-17 cores in Cha I and 2-5 cores in Cha III, which leads to a range of 13-28% of the cores in Cha I and 10-25% of the cores in Cha III that are contracting and may become prestellar. Future dynamical interactions between the cores will not be dynamically significant in either Cha I or III, but the subregion Cha I North may experience collisions between cores within ~0.7 Myr. Turbulence dissipation in the cores of both clouds is seen in the high-density tracers N2H+ 1-0 and HC3N 10-9. Evidence of depletion in the Cha I core interiors is seen in the abundance distributions of C17O, C18O, and C34S. Both contraction and static chemical models indicate that the HC3N to N2H+ abundance ratio is a good evolutionary indicator in the prestellar phase for both gravitationally bound and unbound cores. In the framework of these models, we find that the cores in Cha III and the southern part of Cha I are in a similar evolutionary stage and are less chemically evolved than the central region of Cha I. The measured HC3N/N2H+ abundance ratio and the evidence for contraction motions seen towards the Cha III starless cores suggest that Cha III is younger than Cha I Centre and that some of its cores may form stars in the future. The cores in Cha I South may on the other hand be transient structures. (abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. The resolution of Figure 2 has been degraded and the abstract in the metadata has been shortened to fit within the limits set by arXi

Exploring molecular complexity with ALMA (EMoCA): Detection of three new hot cores in Sagittarius B2(N)

The SgrB2 molecular cloud contains several sites forming high-mass stars. SgrB2(N) is one of its main centers of activity. It hosts several compact and UCHII regions, as well as two known hot molecular cores (SgrB2(N1) and SgrB2(N2)), where complex organic molecules are detected. Our goal is to use the high sensitivity of ALMA to characterize the hot core population in SgrB2(N) and shed a new light on the star formation process. We use a complete 3 mm spectral line survey conducted with ALMA to search for faint hot cores in SgrB2(N). We report the discovery of three new hot cores that we call SgrB2(N3), SgrB2(N4), and SgrB2(N5). The three sources are associated with class II methanol masers, well known tracers of high-mass star formation, and SgrB2(N5) also with a UCHII region. The chemical composition of the sources and the column densities are derived by modelling the whole spectra under the assumption of LTE. The H2 column densities are computed from ALMA and SMA continuum emission maps. The H2 column densities of these new hot cores are found to be 16 up to 36 times lower than the one of the main hot core Sgr B2(N1). Their spectra have spectral line densities of 11 up to 31 emission lines per GHz, assigned to 22-25 molecules. We derive rotational temperatures around 140-180 K for the three new hot cores and mean source sizes of 0.4 for SgrB2(N3) and 1.0 for SgrB2(N4) and SgrB2(N5). SgrB2(N3) and SgrB2(N5) show high velocity wing emission in typical outflow tracers, with a bipolar morphology in their integrated intensity maps suggesting the presence of an outflow, like in SgrB2(N1). The associations of the hot cores with class II methanol masers, outflows, and/or UCHII regions tentatively suggest the following age sequence: SgrB2(N4), SgrB2(N3), SgrB2(N5), SgrB2(N1). The status of SgrB2(N2) is unclear. It may contain two distinct sources, a UCHII region and a very young hot core.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 24 pages, 23 figure

Silica grain catalysis of methanol formation

The specific catalytic effect of a silica grain on the formation of methanol via the sequential addition of H atoms to CO adsorbed on the surface is investigated. A negatively charged defect on a siliceous edingtonite surface is found to reduce the gas phase barriers for the H + COads and H + H2C=O-ads reactions by 770 and 399 K, respectively, when compared to the same reactions in the gas phase. The catalytic effect of negatively charged surface sites could also be applicable to the hydrogenation of other adsorbed unsaturated species. However, the activation energies on the surface defect are still too large (1150 and 2230 K) for CH3OH to form efficiently at 10-20 K in the interstellar medium via a classical mechanism. It is therefore suggested that quantum mechanical tunnelling through the activation barrier is required for these hydrogen addition reactions to proceed at such temperatures. The calculations show that because the adsorption energies of CO and H2C=O on the negatively charged defect are substantial, CH3OH may form efficiently during the warm-up period in star-forming regions

Sensitivity Analysis of Grain Surface Chemistry to Binding Energies of Ice Species

Advanced telescopes, such as ALMA and the James Webb Space Telescope, are likely to show that the chemical universe may be even more complex than currently observed, requiring astrochemical modelers to improve their models to account for the impact of new data. However, essential input information for gas‑grain models, such as binding energies of molecules to the surface, have been derived experimentally only for a handful of species, leaving hundreds of species with highly uncertain estimates. We present in this paper a systematic study of the effect of uncertainties in the binding energies on an astrochemical two-phase model of a dark molecular cloud, using the rate equations approach. A list of recommended binding energy values based on a literature search of published data is presented. Thousands of simulations of dark cloud models were run, and in each simulation a value for the binding energy of hundreds of species was randomly chosen from a normal distribution. Our results show that the binding energy of H2 is critical for the surface chemistry. For high binding energies, H2 freezes out on the grain forming an H2 ice. This is not physically realistic, and we suggest a change in the rate equations. The abundance ranges found are in reasonable agreement with astronomical ice observations. Pearson correlation coefficients revealed that the binding energy of HCO, HNO, CH2, and C correlate most strongly with the abundance of dominant ice species. Finally, the formation route of complex organic molecules was found to be sensitive to the branching ratios of H2CO hydrogenation