2015/03/24 by Paul M. Woods, Paul Woods, Angela Occhiogrosso +9 · 92 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Geography #Molecular Spectroscopy and Structure #Organic chemistry #Physics #Sink (geography) #Sulfur #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stv652
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 450(2), 1256-1267 (Oxford University Press) · 13 pages, 6 colourful figures, accepted by MNRAS
arxiv created 2015/03/24 · openalex publication_date 2015/04/23 · arxiv updated 2015/06/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Sulphur appears to be depleted by an order of magnitude or more from its elemental abundance in star-forming regions. In the last few years, numerous observations and experiments have been performed in order to understand the reasons behind this depletion without providing a satisfactory explanation of the sulphur chemistry towards high-mass star-forming cores. Several sulphur-bearing molecules have been observed in these regions, and yet none are abundant enough to make up the gas-phase deficit. Where, then, does this hidden sulphur reside? This paper represents a step forward in our understanding of the interactions among the various S-bearing species. We have incorporated recent experimental and theoretical data into a chemical model of a hot molecular core in order to see whether they give any indication of the identity of the sulphur sink in these dense regions. Despite our model producing reasonable agreement with both solid-phase and gas-phase abundances of many sulphur-bearing species, we find that the sulphur residue detected in recent experiments takes up only ∼6 per cent of the available sulphur in our simulations, rather than dominating the sulphur budget.