CAREER: Complex organic molecules in cold interstellar clouds-- A laboratory kinetics study

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Complex organic molecules are the ultimate building blocks of life on Earth, and they are ubiquitous throughout the Galaxy. One of the more surprising places they are found is in cold, dense pre-stellar cores. Current state-of-the-art chemical models fail to accurately reproduce the observed abundances of nearly all complex organic molecules or to predict their presence in pre-stellar cores. Dr. Crabtree and his students will examine chemical processes that form these molecules at the temperatures found in the interstellar medium and in pre-stellar cores. High formation rates at these low temperatures could imply that prebiotic chemistry is ubiquitous throughout the Universe, which could have important implications on the search for life. This work will lead to a minimum of three PhD theses, and undergraduate students will participate this project through UC Davis’s CURE Summer Research Program.The team will conduct experiments with a powerful new instrument based on a uniform supersonic expansion coupled to a chirped-pulse Fourier transform microwave spectrometer to gather rate data and chemical products of hydroxyl and sulfanyl reactions with small O-, N-, and S- bearing molecules. These data will be crucial in forming astrochemical models and comparing them to ALMA observations of star forming regions. The experimental work will create thesis opportunities for graduate students and summer research opportunities for undergraduate students at UC Davis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.