Improved Understanding of Molecular Clouds and Emission Line Objects with Laboratory Astrophysics Studies at the Heidelberg Ion Storage Ring

哥伦比亚大学的丹尼尔·萨文博士和霍尔格·克雷克尔博士将在实验室研究氢分子H3+的破坏率，并将其应用于研究分子云和发射线物体，如银河系和河外气态星云。实验室测量将集中在H3+解离复合的测量，这在分子云中观察到的复杂分子的形成中起着重要作用。该团队还将对氧（O2+），硫（S2+）和氖（Ne2+）分子进行类似的测量，以确定HII区域电离恒星的有效温度。这项工作将通过生成可用于解释天文观测的原子和分子数据来影响天文学界。这将是一个跨学科的努力，汇集天体物理学，原子和分子物理学。这项研究还将有助于促进天体物理学方面的国际合作，因为它将使用位于德国海德堡的马克斯普朗克核物理研究所的重离子测试储存环进行，因为美国目前还没有用于拟议研究的设施。

Dr. Daniel Savin and Dr. Holger Kreckel at Columbia University will examine destruction rates for the hydrogen molecule H3+ in the laboratory with applications for studying molecular clouds and emission line objects such as Galactic and extragalactic gaseous nebulae. The laboratory measurements will focus on measurements of H3+ dissociative recombination, which plays an important role in the formation of complex molecules observed in molecular clouds. The team will also make similar measurements for oxygen (O2+), sulfur (S2+), and neon (Ne2+) molecules to determine the effective temperature of ionizing stars in HII regions.This work will impact the astronomical community by generating atomic and molecular data that can be used to interpret astronomical observations. This will be a trans-disciplinary effort, bringing together astrophysics, atomic and molecular physics. The research will also help foster international collaborations in astrophysics as it will be carried out using the heavy-ion Test Storage Ring at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, as no facilities currently exist in the U.S. for the proposed studies.