Formation of water and methanol in star forming molecular clouds

¹ Indian Centre for Space Physics, Chalantika 43, Garia Station Rd., Kolkata 700084, India e-mail: ankan@csp.res.in
² S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700098, India e-mail: [acharyya;chakraba]@bose.res.in
³ Maharaja Manindra Chandra College, 20 Ramakanta Bose lane, Kolkata 700003, India e-mail: sonali@csp.res.in

Received: 5 August 2007
Accepted: 7 April 2008

Abstract

Aims. We study the formation of water and methanol in the dense cloud conditions to find the dependence of its production rate on the binding energies, reaction mechanisms, temperatures, and grain site number. We wish to find the effective grain surface area available for chemical reaction and the effective recombination timescales as functions of grain and gas parameters.

Methods. We used a Monte Carlo simulation to follow the chemical processes occurring on the grain surface. We carried out the simulations on the Olivine grains of different sizes, temperatures, gas phase abundances and different reaction mechanisms. We consider H, O, and CO as the accreting species from the gas phase and allow ten chemical reactions among them on the grains.

Results. We find that the formation rate of various molecules is strongly dependent on the binding energies. When the binding energies are high, it is very difficult to produce significant amounts of the molecular species. Instead, the grain is found to be full of atomic species. The production rates are found to depend on the number density in the gas phase. When the density is high, the production of various molecules on the grains is small as grain sites are quickly filled up by atomic species. If both the Eley-Rideal and Langmuir-Hinselwood mechanisms are considered, then the production rates are maximum and the grains are filled up relatively faster. Thus, if allowed, the Eley-Rideal mechanism can also play a major role and more so when the grain is full of immobile species. We show that the concept of the effective grain surface area, which we introduced in our earlier work, plays a significant role in grain chemistry.

Conclusions. We compute the abundance of water and methanol and show that the results strongly depend on the density and composition in the gas phase, as well as various grain parameters. In the rate equation, it is generally assumed that the recombination efficiencies are independent of the grain parameters, and the surface coverage. Presently, our computed parameter α for each product is found to depend on the accretion rate, the grain parameters and the surface coverage of the grain. We compare our results obtained from the rate equation and the one from the effective rate equation, which includes α. A comparison of our results with the observed abundance shows very good agreement.