Chemical evolution of the gas in C-type shocks in dark clouds

TL;DR

This paper models the chemical evolution in C-type shocks within dark clouds, incorporating detailed gas-grain interactions, to understand molecule formation and destruction during shock events.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive magnetohydrodynamic model that includes gas-grain chemistry, sputtering, and radiative transfer, providing new insights into chemical processing in shocks.

Findings

Molecules ejected from ice mantles are rapidly destroyed at high shock speeds.

Postshock regions can have significantly higher abundances of complex organic molecules.

Sputtering and shock speed critically influence molecule survival and formation.

Abstract

A magnetohydrodynamic model of a steady, transverse C-type shock in a dense molecular cloud is presented. A complete gas-grain chemical network is taken into account: the gas-phase chemistry, the adsorption of gas species on dust grains, various desorption mechanisms, the grain surface chemistry, the ion neutralization on dust grains, the sputtering of grain mantles. The population densities of energy levels of ions CI, CII and OI and molecules H$_2$, CO, H$_2$O are computed in parallel with the dynamical and chemical rate equations. The large velocity gradient approximation is used in the line radiative transfer calculations. The simulations consist of two steps: (i) modelling of the chemical and thermal evolution of a static molecular cloud and (ii) shock simulations. A comparison is made with the results of publicly available models of similar physical systems. The focus of the paper is on the chemical processing of gas material and ice mantles of dust grains by the shock. Sputtering of ice mantles takes place in the shock region close to the temperature peak of the neutral gas. At high shock speeds, molecules ejected from ice mantles are effectively destroyed in hot gas, and their survival time is low - of the order of dozens of years. After a passage of high-speed C-type shock, a zone of high abundance of atomic hydrogen appears in the cooling postshock gas that triggers formation of complex organic species such as methanol. It is shown that abundances of some complex organic molecules (COMs) in the postshock region can be much higher than in the preshock gas. These results are important for interpretation of observations of COMs in protostellar outflows.