< Back to previous page

Project

Collisional excitation of astrophysical molecules induced by water

Comets are important objects as their detailed analysis can inform us about the formation of our solar system and the origin of life on Earth. It is therefore important to accurately determine the physical conditions and chemical composition of cometary atmospheres. In order to do so, we need to perform modeling of molecular spectra. The full exploitation of these molecular spectra requires going beyond the local thermodynamic equilibrium approach and hence requires a knowledge of the radiative and collisional properties of the molecular species. The radiative properties can often be obtained from analytic formulas, but the collisional properties requires long and computationally intensive calculations. In comets, the excitation of molecules is usually dominated by collisions with water (H2O) molecules. However, in the case of comets at large heliocentric distances, the production of the CO (carbon monoxide) gas is much larger than the production rate of H2O so that molecules can also be excited efficiently in collisions with CO. The goal of the thesis is the determination of collisional properties of molecules such as CO, CS HCN, and HNC in collision with heavy partners such as H2O and CO. Large scale scattering calculations will be performed to obtain collisional rate coefficients and apply them to astrophysical models.
Date:11 Jun 2021 →  18 May 2022
Keywords:Astrochemistry
Disciplines:Quantum chemistry, Astrochemistry, Molecular physics
Project type:PhD project