Abstract
Abstract
While gas-phase astrochemical reaction networks nicely replicate the abundance of hydrogen-deficient organics like linear cyanopolyynes, pathways to complex organic molecules (COMs)—organic molecules with six or more atoms—have not been completely understood, with gas-phase models often significantly underestimating fractional abundances of the astronomically observed organics by orders of magnitude. Here, by exploiting cyclopropenone (c-C3H2O) as a tracer, laboratory experiments on the processing of an ice mixture of acetylene(C2H2) and carbon monoxide (CO) by energetic electrons coupled with astrochemical model simulations expose a previously poorly explored reaction class leading to COMs via galactic cosmic-ray-mediated nonequilibrium chemistry. These processes occur within interstellar ices at ultralow temperatures, but not through traditional radical–radical pathways on grain surfaces in the warm-up phase of the ices as hypothesized for the last decades, but more likely through barrierless excited state reactions during the irradiation.
Funder
National Science Foundation
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
American Chemical Society
NSF XSEDE
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Subject
Space and Planetary Science,Astronomy and Astrophysics
Cited by
14 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献