1,737 research outputs found
Erratum: The chemistry of transient molecular cloud cores
We assume that some, but not all, of the structure observed in molecular clouds is associated with transient features which are not bound by self-gravity. We investigate the chemistry of a transient density fluctuation, with properties similar to those of a core within a molecular cloud. We run a multipoint chemical code through a core's condensation from a diffuse medium to its eventual dispersion, over a period of ∼1 Myr. The dynamical description adopted for our study is based on an understanding of a particular mechanism, involving slow-mode wave excitation, for transient structure formation which so far has been studied in detail only with plane-parallel models in which self-gravity has not been included. We find a significant enhancement of the chemical composition of the core material on its return to diffuse conditions, whilst the expansion of the core as it disperses moves this material out to large distances from the core centre. This process transports molecular species formed in the high-density regions out into the diffuse medium. Chemical enrichment of the cloud as a whole also occurs, as other cores of various sizes, life-spans and separations evolve throughout. Enrichment is strongly affected by freeze-out on to dust grains, which takes place in high-density, high visual extinction regions. As the core disperses after reaching its peak density and the visual extinction drops below a critical value, grain mantles are evaporated back into the gas phase, initiating more chemistry. The influence of the sizes, masses and cycle periods of cores will be large both for the level of chemical enrichment of a dark cloud and ultimately for the low-mass star formation rate. The cores in which stars form are almost certainly bound by their self-gravity and are not transient in the sense that the cores on which most of our study is focused are transient. Obviously, enrichment of the chemistry of low-density material will not take place if self-gravity prevents the re-expansion of a core. We also consider the case of a self-gravitating core, by holding its peak density conditions for a further 0.4 Myr. We find that the differences near the peak densities between transient and gravitationally bound cores are generally small, and the resultant column densities for objects near the peak densities do not provide definitive criteria for discriminating between transient and bound cores. However, increases in fractional abundances due to reinjection of mantle-borne species may provide a criterion for detection of a non-bound core
The molecular condensations ahead of Herbig-Haro objects. II: a theoretical investigation of the HH 2 condensation
Clumps of enhanced molecular emission are present close to a number of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. These enhancements may be the consequence of an active photochemistry driven by the UV radiation originating from the shock front of the HH object. On the basis of this picture and as a follow up to a molecular line survey toward the quiescent molecular clump ahead of the HH object, HH 2 (Girart et al. 2002), we present a detailed time and depth dependent chemical model of the observed clump. Despite several difficulties in matching the observations, we constrain some of the physical and chemical parameters of the clump ahead of HH 2. In particular, we find that the clump is best described by more than one density component with a peak density of 3 × 105 cm-3 and a visual extinction of ≤3.5 mag; its lifetime can not be much higher than 100 years and the impinging radiation is enhanced with respect to the ambient one by probably no more than 3 orders of magnitude. Our models also indicate that carbon-bearing species should not completely hydrogenate as methane when freezing out on grains during the formation of the clump
Statistical Properties of Interacting Bose Gases in Quasi-2D Harmonic Traps
The analytical probability distribution of the quasi-2D (and purely 2D) ideal
and interacting Bose gas are investigated by using a canonical ensemble
approach. Using the analytical probability distribution of the condensate, the
statistical properties such as the mean occupation number and particle number
fluctuations of the condensate are calculated. Researches show that there is a
continuous crossover of the statistical properties from a quasi-2D to a purely
2D ideal or interacting gases. Different from the case of a 3D Bose gas, the
interaction between atoms changes in a deep way the nature of the particle
number fluctuations.Comment: RevTex, 10pages, 4 figures, E-mail: [email protected]
Detection of a branched alkyl molecule in the interstellar medium: iso-propyl cyanide
The largest non-cyclic molecules detected in the interstellar medium (ISM)
are organic with a straight-chain carbon backbone. We report an interstellar
detection of a branched alkyl molecule, iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN), with an
abundance 0.4 times that of its straight-chain structural isomer. This
detection suggests that branched carbon-chain molecules may be generally
abundant in the ISM. Our astrochemical model indicates that both isomers are
produced within or upon dust grain ice mantles through the addition of
molecular radicals, albeit via differing reaction pathways. The production of
iso-propyl cyanide appears to require the addition of a functional group to a
non-terminal carbon in the chain. Its detection therefore bodes well for the
presence in the ISM of amino acids, for which such side-chain structure is a
key characteristic.Comment: This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by
permission of the AAAS for non-commercial use. The definitive version was
published in Science 345, 1584 (2014), doi:10.1126/science.125667
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
Space-by-time manifold representation of dynamic facial expressions for emotion categorization
Visual categorization is the brain computation that reduces high-dimensional information in the visual environment into a smaller set of meaningful categories. An important problem in visual neuroscience is to identify the visual information that the brain must represent and then use to categorize visual inputs. Here we introduce a new mathematical formalism—termed space-by-time manifold decomposition—that describes this information as a low-dimensional manifold separable in space and time. We use this decomposition to characterize the representations used by observers to categorize the six classic facial expressions of emotion (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad). By means of a Generative Face Grammar, we presented random dynamic facial movements on each experimental trial and used subjective human perception to identify the facial movements that correlate with each emotion category. When the random movements projected onto the categorization manifold region corresponding to one of the emotion categories, observers categorized the stimulus accordingly; otherwise they selected “other.” Using this information, we determined both the Action Unit and temporal components whose linear combinations lead to reliable categorization of each emotion. In a validation experiment, we confirmed the psychological validity of the resulting space-by-time manifold representation. Finally, we demonstrated the importance of temporal sequencing for accurate emotion categorization and identified the temporal dynamics of Action Unit components that cause typical confusions between specific emotions (e.g., fear and surprise) as well as those resolving these confusions
Parameterizing the interstellar dust temperature
The temperature of interstellar dust particles is of great importance to
astronomers. It plays a crucial role in the thermodynamics of interstellar
clouds, because of the gas-dust collisional coupling. It is also a key
parameter in astrochemical studies that governs the rate at which molecules
form on dust. In 3D (magneto)hydrodynamic simulations often a simple expression
for the dust temperature is adopted, because of computational constraints,
while astrochemical modelers tend to keep the dust temperature constant over a
large range of parameter space. Our aim is to provide an easy-to-use parametric
expression for the dust temperature as a function of visual extinction () and to shed light on the critical dependencies of the dust temperature on
the grain composition. We obtain an expression for the dust temperature by
semi-analytically solving the dust thermal balance for different types of
grains and compare to a collection of recent observational measurements. We
also explore the effect of ices on the dust temperature. Our results show that
a mixed carbonaceous-silicate type dust with a high carbon volume fraction
matches the observations best. We find that ice formation allows the dust to be
warmer by up to 15% at high optical depths ( mag) in the
interstellar medium. Our parametric expression for the dust temperature is
presented as , where is in units of the Draine (1978) UV fieldComment: 16 pages, 17 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A.
Version 2: the omission of factor 0.921 in equation 4 is correcte
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