Chemical And Radiative Transfer Modeling Of Propylene Oxide


Propylene Oxide

The recent identification of the first complex chiral molecule, propylene oxide (PrO) in space opens up a new window to further study the origin of homochirality on the Earth.

There are some recent studies to explain the formation of PrO however additional studies on the formation of this species are needed for better understanding. We seek to prepare a complete reaction network to study the formation of propylene oxide in the astrophysically relevant conditions. Based on our results, a detailed radiative transfer modeling has been carried out to propose some more transitions which would potentially be targeted in the millimeter wave domain. Gas-grain chemical network was used to explain the observed abundance of PrO in a cold shell surrounding the high-mass star-forming region of Sgr B2. Quantum chemical calculations were employed to study various reaction parameters and to compute multiple vibrational frequencies of PrO. To model the formation of PrO in the observed region, we considered a dark cloud model.

Additionally, we used a model to check the feasibility of forming PrO in the hot core region. Some potential transitions in the millimeter wave domain are predicted which could be useful for the future astronomical detection. Radiative transfer modeling has been utilized to extract the physical condition which might be useful to know the properties of the source in detail. Moreover, vibrational transitions of PrO has been provided which could be very useful for the future detection of PrO by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Ankan Das, Prasanta Gorai, Sandip K. Chakrabarti
(Submitted on 13 Jun 2019)

Comments: 35 pages, 15 figures, Accepted for the publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Cite as: arXiv:1906.05604 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:1906.05604v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
Submission history
From: Ankan Das
[v1] Thu, 13 Jun 2019 11:27:41 UTC (6,042 KB)
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry

Please follow Astrobiology on Twitter.

  • submit to reddit