Cosmic rays (CRs) play a crucial role in the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium (ISM). At the high densities found in molecular clouds, they represent the main ionising agent of the gas, affecting its heating and evolution. CRs ionise molecular hydrogen, quickly producing H3+, setting the gas ionisation fraction. The latter affects the timescale of ambipolar diffusion —the drift...
Machine learning is revolutionizing astrochemistry by providing new ways to analyze complex datasets and accelerate computationally expensive models. However, interpretability remains a key challenge, especially when extracting physical insights from data-driven approaches. In this talk, I will present recent advancements in applying interpretable machine learning techniques to astrochemical...
The last ten years or so have witnessed a tremendous growth
on the detection and observation of charged molecular species in the interstellar medium (ISM), especially within the special environments provided by interstellar and circumstellar clouds. Further observations within the atmospheres of the exoplanets have confirmed the marked ubiquity of these most diverse chemical species in the...
I will present recent advances in understanding properties of low-energy CRs in molecular clouds.
In the first part of my talk I will summarize results of reevaluation of CR ionization rate (CRIR) derived from available measurements. Previous estimates of CRIR for these measurements relied on model-dependent assessments of the gas density along the probed sight lines. Now, we utilized...
T Tauri stars are known to be magnetically active stars subject to strong flares observed in X-rays. These flares are likely due to intense magnetic reconnection events during which a part of the stored magnetic energy is converted into energetic supra-thermal particles.
Since T Tauri stars are surrounded by accretion discs, these particles may influence the disc dynamics and chemistry. The...
Modeling cosmic-ray (CR) transport on galactic scale is a challenging task due to the complex physical processes that couple CRs to the thermal gas, which are not yet fully understood. As a result, in most interstellar-medium (ISM) studies involving CRs, the interaction between CRs and their scattering waves, that is unresolved on macroscopic scales, is treated via a constant scattering...
Cosmic rays (CRs) have a large effect on the physical and chemical evolution of star-forming material. One particular aspect of this is desorption; CRs that impact dust grains deposit energy along their track, heating the grain transiently to a higher temperature. The grain then sheds the deposited energy via (partial) desorption of the ice mantle. This mechanism is arguably the most important...
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) contains most of the mass of our Galaxy but its star formation rate is one order of magnitude lower than in the Galactic disk. This is likely related to the fact that the bulk of the gas in the CMZ is in a warm (>100 K) and turbulent phase with little material in the prestellar phase.
In this talk, I will first present D/H ratios of HCN, HNC, HCO$^{+}$, and...
Following the initial detection of a molecule in the interstellar medium (ISM) in the late 1930s, more than 330 different species have been identified to date. The detection rate has increased in tandem with the enhancement of telescope sensitivity, particularly in the centimetre and (sub)millimetre ranges. Remarkably, the field has recently undergone a true revolution, with nearly 100 new...
Non-equilibrium thermo-chemistry plays a crucial role in shaping the properties of the interstellar medium, from galactic to protoplanetary scales, particularly within molecular clouds. However, accurately modeling its effects in numerical simulations remains a significant challenge due to the complexity of the associated systems of ODEs.
To address this, surrogate models—often based on...
