Effects of Initial Condition and Cloud Density on the Composition of the Grain Mantle

TL;DR

This study models the chemical evolution of grain mantles in interstellar clouds, focusing on water, methanol, and carbon dioxide, revealing how initial conditions and density influence molecular abundances and mantle growth.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo simulation incorporating multi-layer formation and freeze-out effects, highlighting the dependence of molecular production on initial conditions and density.

Findings

Methanol is over-produced when O is less than three times CO.

A narrow parameter space reproduces observed molecule abundances.

Mantle growth reaches 60 to 500 layers over two million years.

Abstract

Evolution of grain mantles in various interstellar environment is studied. We concentrate mainly on water, methanol, carbon di-oxide, which constitute nearly 90% of the grain mantle. We investigate how the production rates of these molecules depend on the relative gas phase abundances of oxygen and carbon monoxide and constrain the relevant parameter space which reproduces these molecules closed to the observed abundances. Allowing to accrete only H, O and CO on the grains and using the Monte-Carlo method we follow the chemical processes for a few million years. We allow formation of multi-layers on the grains and incorporate the freeze-out effects of accreting O and CO. We find that the formation of these molecules depends on the initial conditions as well as the average cloud density. Specifically, when the number density of accreting O is less than 3 times more than that of CO, methanol is always over-produced. Using available reaction pathways it appears to be difficult to match the exact observed abundances of all the three molecules simultaneously. Only in a narrow region of parameter space all these three molecules are produced within the observed limit. In addition to this, we found that the incorporation of the freeze-outs of O and CO leads to almost steady state on the grain surface. The mantle thickness grows anywhere between 60 to 500 layers in a period of two million years. In addition, we consider a case where the gas number density changes with time due to gradual collapse of the molecular cloud and present the evolution of composition of different species as a function of radius of the collapsing cloud.