UNIFORM SUPERSONIC FLOWS IN CHEMICAL PHYSICS

Radioastronomy has painted an extraordinary picture of the Galactic interstellar medium, which displays an amazing organization and structuring of matter from very hot ultra-diluted media to very cold denser milieus considered as the cradles of stars. In these latter environments, the discovery of a chemical diversity of molecules, including those associated with precursors to life itself, immediately brought to light the question of the mechanisms leading to their formation and persistence at temperatures as low as 10 K. The chemical networks developed to understand telescope observations required a great deal of physical and chemical parameters relevant to interstellar conditions, particularly at very low temperatures. These included the rate coefficients of thousands of gas phase chemical reactions. Such data were missing in the 1970s, when the very first molecular discoveries were made. Then, in the early eighties, it was realized that uniform supersonic flows were ideal chemical reactors to study reaction kinetics at interstellar temperatures.

Uniform Supersonic Flows in Chemical Physics reviews 40 years of use of such reactors, the so-called CRESU machines, focusing on major breakthroughs brought to chemical physics, physical chemistry, astrophysics and astrochemistry by the various experiments carried out with such apparatuses. The wealth of kinetic data at very low temperatures provided new targets for the predictions of theory, with new theoretical methods being developed to explain observed behavior. The first two chapters describe the physical context of reaction kinetics at very low temperatures and the requirements needed to run optimally such uniform supersonic flows, together with a historical perspective. Chapters 3 to 9 describe the various families of chemical processes that have been explored within the CRESU technique, highlighting major advances and offering an exhaustive up-to-date bibliography. Chapters 10 and 11 show how these experimental results have helped in improving the ideas in quantum chemistry and interstellar modeling. The book concludes with an overview of potential perspectives and new routes to be explored.

Contents:

• Gas Phase Reaction Kinetics at Low and Very Low Temperatures: Fundamentals and Contexts (Bertrand R Rowe and André Canosa)
• Laval Nozzles: Design, Characterization, and Applications (André Canosa and Elena Jiménez)
• Ion Chemistry in Uniform Supersonic Flows (Ludovic Biennier, Sophie Carles, François Lique and James Brian Mitchell)
• Study of Electron Attachment Reactions Using the CRESU Technique (Fabien Goulay and Bertrand R Rowe)
• Neutral–Neutral Reactions (Kevin M Hickson and Dwayne E Heard)
• Nucleation Studies in Supersonic Flow (Barbara Wyslouzil and Ruth Signorell)
• Collisional Energy Transfer in Uniform Supersonic Flows (Ilsa R Cooke and Ian R Sims)
• Low Temperature Product Detection and Branching Ratios (Sébastien D Le Picard, Abdessamad Benidar and Fabien Goulay)
• Infrared Absorption Spectroscopy in Laval Nozzle Supersonic Flows (Robert Georges, Eszter Dudás, Nicolas Suas-David and Lucile Rutkowski)
• Cold Chemistry and Beyond: The Astrochemical Context (Eric Herbst)
• Theoretical Rate Constants (Philippe Halvick and Thierry Stoecklin)
• Conclusions: Future Challenges and Perspectives (Bertrand R Rowe, André Canosa and Dwayne E Heard)

Readership: Primarily academics in chemistry, physics, astronomy and astrophysics including researchers in the field of gas phase processes at low and ultralow temperatures; as well as researchers in the field of chemical physics, physical chemistry, chemical kinetics, astrochemistry, molecular physics and fluid mechanics. Some industrialists may be interested in the technical aspects of uniform flows.

Key Features:

• The first exhaustive review of the CRESU technique and its wide range of applications, together with the prodigious quantity of kinetic data it has delivered
• Provides a singular location for access to unparalleled experimental detail regarding methods utilising uniform flows. Detail which was previously spread across various technical reports and difficult to find
• Editors and contributors are experts either in the field of uniform supersonic flows and their application to experimental measurements of rate coefficients over a wide range of temperatures, or theoretical chemistry particularly in the use of ab initio quantum methods and rate theory, or in astrochemical modelling