Revisiting the Chemistry of Star Formation PDF Download

Author: Thomas Vidal
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Astrochemical studies of star formation are of particular interest because they provide a better understanding of how the chemical composition of the Universe has evolved, from the diffuse interstellar medium to the formation of stellar systems and the life they can shelter. Recent advances in chemical modeling, and particularly a better understanding of grains chemistry, now allow to bring new hints on the chemistry of the star formation process, as well as the structures it involves. In that context, the objective of my thesis was to give a new look at the chemistry of star formation using the recent enhancements of the Nautilus chemical model. To that aim, I focused on the sulphur chemistry throughout star formation, from its evolution in dark clouds to hot cores and corinos, attempting to tackle the sulphur depletion problem. I first carried out a review of the sulphur chemical network before studying its effects on the modeling of sulphur in dark clouds. By comparison with observations, I showed that the textsc{Nautilus} chemical model was the first able to reproduce the abundances of S-bearing species in dark clouds using as elemental abundance of sulphur its cosmic one. This result allowed me to bring new insights on the reservoirs of sulphur in dark clouds. I then conducted an extensive study of sulphur chemistry in hot cores and corinos, focusing on the effects of their pre-collapse compositions on the evolution of their chemistries. I also studied the consequences of the use of the common simplifications made on hot core models. My results show that the pre-collapse composition is a key parameter for the evolution of hot cores which could explain the variety of sulphur composition observed in such objects. Moreover, I highlighted the importance of standardizing the chemical modeling of hot cores in astrochemical studies. For my last study, I developed an efficient method for the derivation of the initial parameters of collapse of dark clouds via the use of a physico-chemical database of collapse models, and comparison with observations of Class 0 protostars. From this method, and based on a sample of 12 sources, I was able to derive probabilities on the possible initial parameters of collapse of low-mass star formation.