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My Chemistry with Francesco

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My Chemistry with Francesco Mem. S.A.It. Vol. 88, 678 c SAIt 2017 Memorie della My chemistry with Francesco D. Galli INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, I-50125 Firenze, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Through all his career, Francesco maintained a keen interest in primordial star for- mation and the chemistry of the early Universe. It was therefore quite natural for me, his former student and his officemate for more than 12 years, to be also involved in these studies. In this contribution I summarize the chemistry that Francesco and I developed, pointing out the main findings and false steps of our lifelong collaboration. Key words. Early Universe – Molecular processes – Atomic Processes 1. Introduction ulated my interest in the chemistry of the early Universe, and our discussions during In the summer of 1987, Ralph Pudritz and long walks in the Canadian woods marked the Michel Fich organized a NATO School on beginning of a lifelong collaboration with him “Galactic and Extragalactic Star Formation” on this subject. in Whistler, a resort town in beautiful It is instructive to look in retrospect at the British Columbia, where Francesco was in- topics that Francesco addressed in his 1987 vited to give a review lecture on “Primordial lecture, to assess the progress (or the lack of Star Formation”. Among the participants to it) and the expected (or unexpected) develop- the School were three PhD student of the ments that have occurred in this field in the University of Florence (Riccardo Cesaroni, intervening 30 years. Francesco’s lecture cov- Paolo Lenzuni and myself), and the some- ered four broad subjects: what more mature Director of the Arcetri (1) the search for zero-metal stars, Observatory (Franco Pacini). For the three of (2) the chemistry of the early Universe, us, the youngest members of this scientific (3) the evolution of collapsing gas clouds, and expedition, the 1987 NATO School was the (4) the formation of primordial stars. first experience of an international astronom- ical conference, and, in my case, my first ex- These topics are still in the forefront of cur- citing contact with the great American conti- rent research, as also witnessed by these nent. A picture taken during the School (Fig. 1) Proceedings. In his lecture, Francesco gave shows a relaxing moment during one of our also a summary of his own work done in col- excursions, when Francesco and Franco Pacini laboration with Ed Salpeter and Steve Stahler engaged in a resistance contest in the freezing- that had been published only a few years be- cold waters of the Garibaldi Lake (for the fore: the famous Palla-Salpeter-Stahler (and records, Francesco lost). Francesco’s lecture, permutations) “trilogy” of 1983–1986 (Palla et published one year later (Palla 1988), stim- al. 1983; Stahler et al. 1986a,b) Galli: My chemistry with Francesco 679 Our collaboration on primordial chemistry developed from these premises. The first pa- per of the trilogy (which is Francesco’s most cited paper) pointed out the importance of 3- body reactions, 3H ! H2 + H and 2H + H2 ! H2 + H2 for the gas-phase forma- tion of molecular hydrogen. The conversion of H into H2 was followed with the help of a very simple model for the collapse of a zero- metal cloud. Francesco was aware of the lim- itations of the collapse model and the chem- ical network adopted, and wanted to improve both. Even though his main interest was on the former aspect (collapse and star forma- tion), we resolved to work first on the latter Fig. 1. Francesco Palla and Franco Pacini swim in (the chemistry), and continued to do so until the Garibaldi Lake, British Columbia (July 1987). 2013. The motivation for proceeding in this order was the poor state of primordial chem- istry at the time, with many reaction channels formation of massive stars by the enhanced ac- poorly identified, reactions rates badly guessed cretion rate expected in primordial conditions and often largely discrepant from author to au- (Omukai & Palla 2001); and, second, to extend thor, and the relevant data scattered in pub- his 1986 calculation of the mass-radius relation lications not easily accessible (it was before for protostars to the case of a zero-metallicity the ADS). Especially annoying was the un- cloud (Omukai & Palla 2003). certainty on the H2 cooling rate for collisions Turning back to our chemistry, our criti- with H atoms. In the 1980’s, two indepen- cal selection and analysis of gas-phase reac- dent calculation of this fundamental ingredi- tion rates for a mixture of H, He, D, Li and ent for any recipe of primordial star formation their products was eventually completed and were available: one by Lepp & Shull (1983), published in 1998, together with our “new and and one by Hollenbach & McKee (1979, re- improved” cooling rates for the main molec- vised in 1989), based on independent sets of ular species (Galli & Palla 1998). Our recom- collisional rate coefficients. The problem was mended reaction and cooling rates were widely that the two cooling rates in the low-density adopted by researchers in the field (Galli & regime differed by as much as one order of Palla 1998 is my most cited paper), show- magnitude or more below T ≈ 100 K, a tem- ing that the humble work of reordering and perature range relevant for collapse calcula- systematizing can be useful too. Ten years tions. As a result, the estimate of the minimum later, the H-H2 cooling rate by Galli & Palla mass needed to collapse at redshift z ≈ 30– (1998) was superseded by a newer calculation 40 was uncertain by a factor of ∼ 30 (see e.g. by Glover & Abel (2008), based on updated Fig. 7 of Palla 1999). Clearly, before attack- collisional rate coefficients. The last word on ing our planned collapse calculation, a system- the subject is represented in my opinion by atic and critical reanalysis of the microphysics the extensive set of theoretical calculations was in order. The collapse calculation we orig- performed by Franc¸ois Lique and coworkers inally planned was eventually done, but not (Lique et al. 2012; Lique 2015) of H-H2 colli- by us. The work by Kazuyuki Omukai and sional cross sections and rate coefficients down coworkers is in my opinion the ideal fulfil- to temperatures of 10 K, whose impact on the ment of our program (Omukai & Nishi 1998, H-H2 cooling rate still needs to be fully as- Omukai 2000). Later on, Francesco would “ex- sessed. ploit” K. Omukai’s capabilities to further de- In 2013 Francesco and I were invited to velop his trilogy papers: first, to explore the write an Annual Reviews paper on primordial 680 Galli: My chemistry with Francesco chemistry. For us this was a good opportunity nificant role in the early Universe. It was how- to summarize the latest developments in a his- ever exciting for Francesco and myself to get torical context (Galli & Palla 2013). We real- involved in the laboratory frequency measure- ized that in the intervening years many of the ments of 14 rotational transitions of LiH in the uncertainties that affected the results of Galli & fundamental and in the first two excited vi- Palla (1998) had been largely overcome: first brational states (Bellini et al. 1994), and col- of all, cosmology had entered the “precision laborate with Prof. Francesco Gianturco of the era”, and the uncertainty on the chemistry of University of Rome and his student Stefano the Dark Ages was no longer dominated by Bovino on accurate determinations of reac- uncertainties in the values of the cosmologi- tion rates relevant for the gas-phase chem- cal parameters (all accurately determined by istry of Li and He (Bovino et al. 2011a,b; Boomerang, Planck and WMAP), but by resid- 2012). Then, in collaboration with a young ual uncertainties in the chemical reaction rates. brilliant post-doc, Dominik Schleicher, who These, fortunately, were found to be very small visited the Arcetri Observatory during 2008, at least for the key reactions, with the pos- we computed the distortions imprinted in the sible exception of the 3-body reactions men- CMB by the chemistry taking place dur- tioned earlier, and others of minor relevance. ing the Dark Ages (Schleicher et al. 2008, The 2013 review was the last paper I had the 2009). The changes in the CMB intensity and privilege and the pleasure of writing sitting power spectrum were found to be too small side-by-side with Francesco. It was, as always, to be detected by Planck, but within reach an enjoyable personal experience: Francesco of planned future CMB satellite like PIXIES was dead serious about science, careful and and PRISM. The most promising species from rigorous in his work, but at the same time this point of view were identified in H− (as light-hearted, playful and full of irony with also suggested by Black 2006) and HeH+.A his coworkers. Francesco and I were also cu- few years later Francesco and I met another rious about the possible observational signa- bright freshly graduated young researcher, tures left by primordial molecules in the form Carla Maria Coppola of the University of Bari, of both spatial fluctuations and spectral dis- who patiently and skilfully educated both of us tortions in the cosmic microwave background through the intricacies of state-resolved chem- + (CMB). This idea was first advanced by Viktor istry, in particular of H2 and H2 , and the sub- Dubrovich in the 1970’s (Dubrovich 1977), en- tle effects of non-thermal (recombination) pho- dorsed by Zel’dovich (1978), and later devel- tons (Coppola et al.
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