Experimental evidence for water formation on interstellar dust grains by hydrogen and oxygen atoms

By F. Dulieu, L. Amiaud, E. Congiu, J. Fillion, E. Matar, A. Momeni, V. Pirronello, J. Lemaire. 2009

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. The synthesis of water is one necessary step in the origin and development of life. It is believed that pristine water is formed and grows on the surface of icy dust grains in dark interstellar clouds. Until now, there has been no experimental evidence whether this scenario is feasible or not on an astrophysically relevant template and by hydrogen and oxygen atom reactions. Aims. We present here the first experimental evidence of water synthesis by such a process on a realistic analogue of grain surface in dense clouds, i.e., amorphous water ice. Methods. Atomic beams of oxygen and deuterium are aimed at a porous water ice substrate (H2O) held at 10 K. Products are analyzed by the temperature-programmed desorption technique. Results. We observe the production of HDO and D2O, indicating that water is formed under conditions of the dense interstellar medium from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This experiment opens up the field of a little explored complex chemistry that could occur on dust grains,which is believed to be the site where key processes lead to the molecular diversity and complexity observed in the Universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cb8b6617f974c24335734df23bdd57c2eb6f6747

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. E. Bergin
2. P. Caselli
3. Cecilia Ceccarelli
4. K. Oberg
5. T. Bartels-Rausch
6. R. Garrod
7. E. Herbst
8. M. Tafalla

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. E. Bergin
2. T. Bartels-Rausch
3. K. Oberg
4. Cecilia Ceccarelli
5. P. Caselli

Citations in the corpus

• Astrochemistry and compositions of planetary systems (2020, background): “2002; Watanabe and Kouchi 2002), and CO2 from CO and OH (Ioppolo et al. 2008; Miyauchi et al. 2008; Mokrane et al. 2009; Dulieu et al. 2010).”
• Our astrochemical heritage (2012, background): “that H2O can form via hydrogenation of atomic oxygen (Hiraoka et al. 1998; Dulieu et al. 2010; Jing et al. 2011), molecular oxygen (Ioppolo et al.”
• Ice structures, patterns, and processes: A view across the icefields (2012, background): “…H2O and other small molecules can be formed via heterogeneous reactions under pseudo-interstellar conditions, and some of these experiments have recently been performed (Cuppen et al., 2010; Dulieu et al., 2010; Hidaka et al., 2009; Hiraoka et al., 2006; Ioppolo et al., 2010; Mokrane et al., 2009).”