Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011iaus..280e..24c&link_type=abstract
The Molecular Universe, Proceedings of the 280th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held in Toledo, Spain, May 30
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The study of the formation and the destruction processes of cosmic dust is essential to understand and to quantify the budget of extraterrestrial organic molecules. Although dust with all its components plays an important role in the evolution of interstellar chemistry and in the formation of organic molecules, little is known on the formation and destruction processes of carbonaceous dust. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are important chemical building blocks of interstellar dust. They are detected in interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) and in meteoritic samples. Additionally, observational, laboratory, and theoretical point to PAHs, in their neutral and ionized forms, as an important component of the interstellar medium. Therefore, it is imperative that laboratory experiments be conducted to study the dynamic processes of carbon grain formation from PAH precursors.
Studies of interstellar dust analogs formed from a variety of PAH and hydrocarbon precursors (CH4, C2H4, C2H2) as well as species that include the atoms O, N, and S, have recently been performed in our laboratory under conditions that simulate interstellar and circumstellar environments. The species formed in the pulsed
discharge nozzle (PDN) plasma source are detected and characterized with a high-sensitivity cavity ringdown spectrometer (CRDS) coupled to a Reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ReTOF-MS), thus providing both spectroscopic and ion mass information in-situ. We report the first measurements obtained in these experiments. The formation and destruction paths of carbonaceous molecules will be discussed. From these unique measurements, we derive information on the size and the structure of interstellar dust grain particles, the growth and the destruction processes of interstellar dust and the resulting budget of extraterrestrial organic molecules.
Contreras S. C.
Ricketts Claire L.
Salama Farid
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