Experimental evidence for Glycolaldehyde and Ethylene Glycol formation by surface hydrogenation of CO molecules under dense molecular cloud conditions

2017/05/25 by Gleb Fedoseev, Herma M. Cuppen, Sergio Ioppolo +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stu2603

published as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 448, Issue 2, p.1288-1297 (2015)

arxiv created 2017/05/25 · arxiv updated 2017/05/26

Abstract

This study focuses on the formation of two molecules of astrobiological importance - glycolaldehyde (HC(O)CH2OH) and ethylene glycol (H2C(OH)CH2OH) - by surface hydrogenation of CO molecules. Our experiments aim at simulating the CO freeze-out stage in interstellar dark cloud regions, well before thermal and energetic processing become dominant. It is shown that along with the formation of H2CO and CH3OH - two well established products of CO hydrogenation - also molecules with more than one carbon atom form. The key step in this process is believed to be the recombination of two HCO radicals followed by the formation of a C-C bond. The experimentally established reaction pathways are implemented into a continuous-time random-walk Monte Carlo model, previously used to model the formation of CH3OH on astrochemical time-scales, to study their impact on the solid-state abundances in dense interstellar clouds of glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol.

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