Influence of galactic arm scale dynamics on the molecular composition of the cold and dense ISM III. Elemental depletion and shortcomings of the current physico-chemical models
Abstract
We present a study of the elemental depletion in the interstellar medium. We combined the results of a Galactic model describing the gas physical conditions during the formation of dense cores with a full-gas-grain chemical model. During the transition between diffuse and dense medium, the reservoirs of elements, initially atomic in the gas, are gradually depleted on dust grains (with a phase of neutralization for those which are ions). This process becomes efficient when the density is larger than 100 cm−3. If the dense material goes back into diffuse conditions, these elements are brought back in the gas phase because of photo-dissociations of the molecules on the ices, followed by thermal desorption from the grains. Nothing remains on the grains for densities below 10 cm−3 or in the gas phase in a molecular form. One exception is chlorine, which is efficiently converted at low density. Our current gas–grain chemical model is not able to reproduce the depletion of atoms observed in the diffuse medium except for Cl, which gas abundance follows the observed one in medium with densities smaller than 10 cm−3. This is an indication that crucial processes (involving maybe chemisorption and/or ice irradiation profoundly modifying the nature of the ices) are missing.
Citation
Wakelam , V , Iqbal , W , Melisse , J-P , Gratier , P , Ruaud , M & Bonnell , I 2020 , ' Influence of galactic arm scale dynamics on the molecular composition of the cold and dense ISM III. Elemental depletion and shortcomings of the current physico-chemical models ' , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , vol. 497 , no. 2 , pp. 2309-2319 . https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2016
Publication
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0035-8711Type
Journal article
Description
VW’s research was funded by an European Research Council Starting Grant (3DICE, grant agreement 336474). The authors acknowledge the CNRS program ‘Physique et Chimie du Milieu Interstellaire’ (PCMI) co-funded by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). IAB acknowledges funding from the European Research Council for the FP7 ERC advanced grant project ECOGAL. This work used the DiRAC Complexity system, operated by the University of Leicester IT Services, which forms part of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). This equipment is funded by BIS National E-Infrastructure capital grant ST/K000373/1 and STFC DiRAC Operations grant ST/K0003259/1. DiRAC is part of the National E-Infrastructure. MRõs research was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the NASA Ames Research Center, administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA.Collections
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