Shocks and molecules in protostellar outflows

Arce, Héctor

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/59137 Copy

Description

Title

Shocks and molecules in protostellar outflows

Author(s)

Arce, Héctor

Issue Date

2014-06-19

Keyword(s)

Mini-symposium: Astronomical Molecular Spectroscopy in the Age of ALMA

Abstract

As protostars form through the gravitational infall of material from their parent molecular cloud, they power energetic bipolar outflows that interact with the surrounding medium. Protostellar outflows are important to the chemical evolution of star forming regions, as the shocks produced by the interaction of the high-velocity protostellar wind and the ambient cloud can heat the surrounding medium and trigger chemical and physical processes that would otherwise not take place in a quiescent molecular cloud. Protostellar outflows, are therefore a great laboratory to study shock physics and shock-induced chemistry. I will present results from millimeter-wave observations of a small sample of outflow shocks. The spectra show clear evidence of the existence of complex organic molecules (e.g., methyl formate, ethanol, acetaldehyde) and high abundance of certain simple molecules (e.g., HCO$^+$, HCN, H$_2$O) in outflows. Results indicate that, most likely, the complex species formed on the surface of grains and were then ejected from the grain mantles by the shock. Spectral surveys of shocked regions using ALMA could therefore be used to probe the composition of dust in molecular clouds. Our results demonstrate that outflows modify the chemical composition of the surrounding gaseous environment and that this needs to be considered when using certain species to study active star forming regions.

Publisher

International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/59137

DOI

https://doi.org/10.15278/isms.2014.RF09

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 by the authors. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Owning Collections