562 research outputs found
Isotopic fractionation of carbon, deuterium and nitrogen : a full chemical study
Context. The increased sensitivity and high spectral resolution of millimeter
telescopes allow the detection of an increasing number of isotopically
substituted molecules in the interstellar medium. The 14N/ 15N ratio is
difficult to measure directly for carbon containing molecules. Aims. We want to
check the underlying hypothesis that the 13C/ 12C ratio of nitriles and
isonitriles is equal to the elemental value via a chemical time dependent gas
phase chemical model. Methods. We have built a chemical network containing D,
13C and 15N molecular species after a careful check of the possible
fractionation reactions at work in the gas phase. Results. Model results
obtained for 2 different physical conditions corresponding respectively to a
moderately dense cloud in an early evolutionary stage and a dense depleted
pre-stellar core tend to show that ammonia and its singly deuterated form are
somewhat enriched in 15N, in agreement with observations. The 14N/ 15N ratio in
N2H+ is found to be close to the elemental value, in contrast to previous
models which obtain a significant enrichment, as we found that the
fractionation reaction between 15N and N2H+ has a barrier in the entrance
channel. The large values of the N2H+/15NNH+ and N2H+/ N15NH+ ratios derived in
L1544 cannot be reproduced in our model. Finally we find that nitriles and
isonitriles are in fact significantly depleted in 13C, questioning previous
interpretations of observed C15N, HC15N and H15NC abundances from 13C
containing isotopologues.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures in the text, 3 Figures in the appendices. 7
tables in the text, 4 tables in the appendices. Accepted for publication by
Astronomy Astrophysic
The interstellar gas-phase chemistry of HCN and HNC
We review the reactions involving HCN and HNC in dark molecular clouds to
elucidate new chemical sources and sinks of these isomers. We find that the
most important reactions for the HCN-HNC system are Dissociative Recombination
(DR) reactions of HCNH+ (HCNH+ + e-), the ionic CN + H3+, HCN + C+, HCN and HNC
reactions with H+/He+/H3+/H3O+/HCO+, the N + CH2 reaction and two new
reactions: H + CCN and C + HNC. We test the effect of the new rate constants
and branching ratios on the predictions of gas-grain chemical models for dark
cloud conditions. The rapid C + HNC reaction keeps the HCN/HNC ratio
significantly above one as long as the carbon atom abundance remains high.
However, the reaction of HCN with H3+ followed by DR of HCNH+ acts to isomerize
HCN into HNC when carbon atoms and CO are depleted leading to a HCN/HNC ratio
close to or slightly greater than 1. This agrees well with observations in
TMC-1 and L134N taking into consideration the overestimation of HNC abundances
through the use of the same rotational excitation rate constants for HNC as for
HCN in many radiative transfer models.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Frustrated magnets in three dimensions: a nonperturbative approach
Frustrated magnets exhibit unusual critical behaviors: they display scaling
laws accompanied by nonuniversal critical exponents. This suggests that these
systems generically undergo very weak first order phase transitions. Moreover,
the different perturbative approaches used to investigate them are in conflict
and fail to correctly reproduce their behavior. Using a nonperturbative
approach we explain the mismatch between the different perturbative approaches
and account for the nonuniversal scaling observed.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. IOP style files included. To appear in Journal of
Physics: Condensed Matter. Proceedings of the conference HFM 2003, Grenoble,
Franc
The gas-phase chemistry of carbon chains in dark cloud chemical models
We review the reactions between carbon chain molecules and radicals, namely
Cn, CnH, CnH2, C2n+1O, CnN, HC2n+1N, with C, N and O atoms. Rate constants and
branching ratios for these processes have been re-evaluated using experimental
and theoretical literature data. In total 8 new species have been introduced,
41 new reactions have been proposed and 122 rate coefficients from
kida.uva.2011 (Wakelam et al. 2012) have been modified. We test the effect of
the new rate constants and branching ratios on the predictions of gas-grain
chemical models for dark cloud conditions using two different C/O elemental
ratios. We show that the new rate constants produce large differences in the
predicted abundances of carbon chains since the formation of long chains is
less effective. The general agreement between the model predictions and
observed abundances in the dark cloud TMC-1 (CP) is improved by the new network
and we find that C/O ratios of 0.7 and 0.95 both produce a similar agreement
for different times. The general agreement for L134N (N) is not significantly
changed. The current work specifically highlights the importance of O + CnH and
N + CnH reactions. As there are very few experimental or theoretical data for
the rate constants of these reactions we highlight the need for experimental
studies of the O + CnH and N + CnH reactions, particularly at low temperature.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Thermal Fluctuations in a Lamellar Phase of a Binary Amphiphile-Solvent Mixture: A Molecular Dynamics Study
We investigate thermal fluctuations in a smectic A phase of an
amphiphile-solvent mixture with molecular dynamics simulations. We use an
idealized model system, where solvent particles are represented by simple
beads, and amphiphiles by bead-and-spring tetramers. At a solvent bead fraction
of 20 % and sufficiently low temperature, the amphiphiles self-assemble into a
highly oriented lamellar phase. Our study aims at comparing the structure of
this phase with the predictions of the elastic theory of thermally fluctuating
fluid membrane stacks [Lei et al., J. Phys. II 5, 1155 (1995)]. We suggest a
method which permits to calculate the bending rigidity and compressibility
modulus of the lamellar stack from the simulation data. The simulation results
are in reasonable agreement with the theory
Critical behavior of frustrated systems: Monte Carlo simulations versus Renormalization Group
We study the critical behavior of frustrated systems by means of Pade-Borel
resummed three-loop renormalization-group expansions and numerical Monte Carlo
simulations. Amazingly, for six-component spins where the transition is second
order, both approaches disagree. This unusual situation is analyzed both from
the point of view of the convergence of the resummed series and from the
possible relevance of non perturbative effects.Comment: RevTex, 10 pages, 3 Postscript figure
Pores in Bilayer Membranes of Amphiphilic Molecules: Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulations Compared with Simple Mesoscopic Models
We investigate pores in fluid membranes by molecular dynamics simulations of
an amphiphile-solvent mixture, using a molecular coarse-grained model. The
amphiphilic membranes self-assemble into a lamellar stack of amphiphilic
bilayers separated by solvent layers. We focus on the particular case of
tension less membranes, in which pores spontaneously appear because of thermal
fluctuations. Their spatial distribution is similar to that of a random set of
repulsive hard discs. The size and shape distribution of individual pores can
be described satisfactorily by a simple mesoscopic model, which accounts only
for a pore independent core energy and a line tension penalty at the pore
edges. In particular, the pores are not circular: their shapes are fractal and
have the same characteristics as those of two dimensional ring polymers.
Finally, we study the size-fluctuation dynamics of the pores, and compare the
time evolution of their contour length to a random walk in a linear potential
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