Physical and Chemical Processes in the Warm and Dense Interstellar Medium

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Within this project we plan to perform the analysis and interpretation of the data that will be taken aboard the Herschel Space Observatory within the Guaranteed Time key projects “The warm and dense ISM” (PI: V. Ossenkopf) and “Herschel HIFI Observations of Extraordinary Sources”. We will try to obtain a first fully self-consistent picture of the physics and chemistry in photon-dominated regions (PDRs), interstellar molecular clouds heated by the radiation of nearby stars. We will perform complementary ground-based observations of the PDRs, combine their results with the Herschel data, and create a numerical model for the physics and chemistry in PDRs by iteratively improving the existing KOSMA-τ PDR model code and fitting the observed data with the model output. In the process of this fitting procedure we will obtain an understanding of the relevant microphysics governing the structure and emission of the warm and dense interstellar medium.