Composition and evolution of interstellar grain mantle under the effects of photodissociation

Abstract

We studied the chemical evolution of interstellar grain mantle by varying the physical parameters of the interstellar medium (ISM). To mimic the actual interstellar condition, gas-grain interactions via accretion from the gas phase and desorption (thermal evaporation and photoevaporation) from the grain surface were considered. We found that the chemical composition of the interstellar grain mantle is highly dependent on the physical parameters associated with molecular cloud. Interstellar photons have been found to play an important role in the growth and structure of the interstellar grain mantle. We considered the effects of interstellar photons (photodissociation and photoevaporation) in our simulation under various interstellar conditions. We noticed that the effects of interstellar photons dominate around the region of lower visual extinction. These photons contribute significantly to the formation of the grain mantle. The energy of the incoming photon is attenuated by the absorption and scattering by the interstellar dust. The topmost layers are assumed to be affected mainly by the incoming radiation. We have studied the effects of photodissociation by varying the number of layers which could be affected by it. Model calculations were carried out for the static (extinction parameter is changing with the density of the cloud) as well as the time-dependent case (i.e. both extinction parameter and number density of the cloud are changing with time) and the results are discussed in detail. Different routes to the formation of water molecules have been studied and it has been noticed that production of water molecules via O3 and H2O2 contributes significantly around the dense region. At the end, various observational evidences for the condensed phase species are summarized with their physical conditions and are compared with our simulation results. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.