Chemistry in Protoplanetary Disks

This comprehensive review summarizes our current understanding of the evolution of gas, solids and molecular ices in protoplanetary disks. Key findings related to disk physics and chemistry, both observationally and theoretically, are highlighted. We discuss which molecular probes are used to derive gas temperature, density, ionization state, kinematics, deuterium fractionation, and study organic matter in protoplanetary disks.Comment: 83 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables, to be published in a Thematic Issue "Astrochemistry" in Chem. Reviews (December 2013). This document is the unedited Author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Chemical Reviews, copyright (c) American Chemical Society after peer revie

Dust input from AGB stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud

The dust-forming population of AGB stars and their input to the interstellar dust budget of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are studied with evolutionary dust models with the main goals (1) to investigate how the amount and composition of dust from AGB stars vary over galactic history; (2) to characterise the mass and metallicity distribution of the present population of AGB stars; (3) to quantify the contribution of AGB stars of different mass and metallicity to the present stardust population in the interstellar medium (ISM). We use models of the stardust lifecycle in the ISM developed and tested for the Solar neighbourhood. The first global spatially resolved reconstruction of the star formation history of the LMC from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey is employed to calculate the stellar populations in the LMC. The dust input from AGB stars is dominated by carbon grains from stars with masses < 4 Msun almost over the entire history of the LMC. The production of silicate, silicon carbide and iron dust is delayed until the ISM is enriched to about half the present metallicity in the LMC. For the first time, theoretically calculated dust production rates of AGB stars are compared to those derived from IR observations of AGB stars for the entire galaxy. We find good agreement within scatter of various observational estimates. We show that the majority of silicate and iron grains in the present stardust population originate from a small population of intermediate-mass stars consisting of only about 4% of the total number of stars, whereas in the Solar neighbourhood they originate from low-mass stars. With models of the lifecycle of stardust grains in the ISM we confirm a large discrepancy between dust input from stars and the existing interstellar dust mass in the LMC reported in Matsuura et al. 2009.Comment: Accepted to A&

SO(9) supergravity in two dimensions

We present maximal supergravity in two dimensions with gauge group SO(9). The construction is based on selecting the proper embedding of the gauge group into the infinite-dimensional symmetry group of the ungauged theory. The bosonic part of the Lagrangian is given by a (dilaton-)gravity coupled non-linear gauged sigma-model with Wess-Zumino term. We give explicit expressions for the fermionic sector, the Yukawa couplings and the scalar potential which supports a half-supersymmetric domain wall solution. The theory is expected to describe the low-energy effective action upon reduction on the D0-brane near-horizon warped AdS_2 x S^8 geometry, dual to the supersymmetric (BFSS) matrix quantum mechanics.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figur

Optical properties of cosmic dust analogs: A review

Nanometer- and micrometer-sized solid particles play an important role in the evolutionary cycle of stars and interstellar matter. The optical properties of cosmic grains determine the interaction of the radiation field with the solids, thereby regulating the temperature structure and spectral appearance of dusty regions. Radiation pressure on dust grains and their collisions with the gas atoms and molecules can drive powerful winds. The analysis of observed spectral features, especially in the infrared wavelength range, provides important information on grain size, composition and structure as well as temperature and spatial distribution of the material. The relevant optical data for interstellar, circumstellar, and protoplanetary grains can be obtained by measurements on cosmic dust analogs in the laboratory or can be calculated from grain models based on optical constants. Both approaches have made progress in the last years, triggered by the need to interpret increasingly detailed high-quality astronomical observations. The statistical theoretical approach, spectroscopic experiments at variable temperature and absorption spectroscopy of aerosol particulates play an important role for the successful application of the data in dust astrophysics.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, invited review for Journal of Nanophotonics, Special Section to honour C.F. Bohre

Can star cluster environment affect dust input from massive AGB stars?

We examine the fraction of massive asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars remaining bound in their parent star clusters and the effect of irradiation of these stars by intracluster ultraviolet (UV) field. We employ a set of N-body models of dynamical evolution of star clusters rotating in a galactic potential at the solar galactocentric radius. The cluster models are combined with stellar evolution formulae, a library of stellar spectra, and simple models for SiO photodissociation in circumstellar environment (CSE). The initial stellar masses of clusters are varied from $50\rm M_\odot$ to $10^{5}\rm M_\odot$. Results derived for individual clusters are combined using a mass distribution function for young star clusters. We find that about 30% of massive AGB stars initially born in clusters become members of the field population, while the rest evolves in star clusters. They are irradiated by strong intracluster UV radiation resulting in the decrease of the photodissociation radius of SiO molecules, in many stars down to the dust formation zone. In absence of dust shielding, the UV photons penetrate in the CSE deeper than $10R_*$ in 64% and deeper than $2 R_*$ in 42% of all massive AGB stars. If this suppresses following dust formation, the current injection rate of silicate dust from AGB stars in the local Galaxy decreases from $2.2 \times 10^{-4}\rm M_\odot\,kpc^{-2}\,Gyr^{-1}$ to $1.8 \times 10^{-4}\rm M_\odot\,kpc^{-2}\,Gyr^{-1}$ at most. A lower revised value of 40% for the expected fraction of presolar silicate grains from massive AGB stars is still high to explain the non-detection of these grains in meteorites.Comment: accepted to ApJ, 14 pages, 9 figures, 5 table

Iron and silicate dust growth in the Galactic interstellar medium: clues from element depletions

The interstellar abundances of refractory elements indicate a substantial depletion from the gas phase, that increases with gas density. Our recent model of dust evolution, based on hydrodynamic simulations of the lifecycle of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) proves that the observed trend for [Si$_{gas}$/H] is driven by a combination of dust growth by accretion in the cold diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) and efficient destruction by supernova (SN) shocks (Zhukovska et al. 2016). With an analytic model of dust evolution, we demonstrate that even with optimistic assumptions for the dust input from stars and without destruction of grains by SNe it is impossible to match the observed [Si$_{gas}$/H]$-n_H$ relation without growth in the ISM. We extend the framework developed in our previous work for silicates to include the evolution of iron grains and address a long-standing conundrum: ``Where is the interstellar iron?'. Much higher depletion of Fe in the warm neutral medium compared to Si is reproduced by the models, in which a large fraction of interstellar iron (70%) is locked as inclusions in silicate grains, where it is protected from sputtering by SN shocks. The slope of the observed [Fe$_{gas}$/H]$-n_H$ relation is reproduced if the remaining depleted iron resides in a population of metallic iron nanoparticles with sizes in the range of 1-10nm. Enhanced collision rates due to the Coulomb focusing are important for both silicate and iron dust models to match the observed slopes of the relations between depletion and density and the magnitudes of depletion at high density.Comment: Accepted for publication in the ApJ, 15 pages, 9 figure