Evolution of baryonic matter from clouds to planets
Pierre Hily-Blant
Table of Contents
News
Contact
- Maître de conférence / Associate Professor
- Université Grenoble Alpes / IPAG (UMR 5274 – DR11)
- Membre honoraire Junior de l'Institut Universitaire de France
Contact
- mailto:pierre.hily-blant@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
- Phone: +33 (0)4 76 63 58 86
- How to come here
Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble
BP 53, 414 rue de la Piscine
F-38041 Grenoble cedex 9
Teaching
Research
My research is developed in the context of star and planet formation, bringing together physical and chemical perspectives. The question is developed along two topics: formation of filaments and dense cores in molecular clouds, and the interstellar heritage from cores to disks to planets.
Turbulence in molecular clouds
Introduction
The main question is to understand what is the role of turbulence in the formation of star forming filaments.
Current research projects
- PhD of Alexandre Perroni (2023-2026): CO chemistry in turbulent molecular
clouds
- Funding: UGA Physics doctoral school
- M2 internship of Hugo Bossard (March-July 2024)
- Measuring the solenoidal and compressive components from CO observations of molecular clouds
- PhD of Simon Delcamp: Coherent structures of molecular clouds
turbulence
- ERC MIST funding 2020-2024
- defended February, 2nd 2024
The MIST project
Activity
- 2023 Cargèse conference
- 2019 Cargèse conference on Cosmic turbulence and magnetic fields : physics of baryonic matter across time and scales
Presentation
This research is part of the MIST ERC advanced grant 2017-2022, P.I.: E. Falgarone
MIST stands for "Molecules, magnetic fields and Intermittency in coSmic Turbulence: Following the energy trail".
Abstract
The discovery of molecules in the early universe is a challenging providence. Molecules unveil the truly cold universe in which stars form and their rich versatility provides unique diagnostics to unravel the "relative importance of purely gravitational effects and gas dynamical effects involving dissipation and radiative cooling", recognized 40 years ago by White and Rees to be a central issue in theories of galaxy formation. Molecules also reveal that cosmic turbulence is far less dissipative than predicted by cosmological simulations, with a broad equipartition in a vast variety of media between the thermal energy of the hottest phases and the turbulent energy of the coldest. Our project focuses on the physics of turbulent dissipation, and its link to the emergence of molecules, in the magnetized compressible medium where gravitational instability develops to form stars and seed galaxies in the early universe. It builds on a fundamental property of turbulence, its space-time intermittency: dissipation occurs in bursts. Our team will foster strong interactions between three main research axes: (1) observations of the chemical and thermal markers of turbulent dissipation in the high-redshift and local universe, (2) statistical analyses of the magnetic and velocity fields in samples of unprecedented size and sensitivity to study the non-Gaussian signatures of turbulent dissipation, and (3) numerical experiments dedicated to (a) the space-time structures of turbulent dissipation and the formation of molecules in their wake, and (b) the split of the energy trails between hot/thermal and cold/turbulent phases. This project will benefit from the prodigious capabilities of the ALMA and NOEMA interferometers, the launch of the JWST in 2018, and the Planck satellite data on polarized Galactic foregrounds. The ENS Physics Department, with its strong theoretical and experimental expertise on turbulence, is an ideal place to house such a project.
Participants
Name | Position |
---|---|
Edith Falgarone | PI of the MIST project; Emeritus, LPENS |
Francois Boulanger | CNRS |
Simon Delcamp | PhD 2019-2022 |
Benjamin Godard | CNAP |
Pierre Hily-Blant | Université Grenoble Alpes |
Andrew Lehmann | Post-doc |
Francois Levrier | LPENS |
Pierre Lesaffre | CNRS |
Guillaume Pineau des Forêts | Emeritus, Obs. de Paris |
Thibaud Richard | PhD |
Alba Vidal Garcia | Post-doc |
Past studies
- Statistical properties and intermittent structures of turbulence in the Polaris and Taurus molecular clouds
- Main papers:
- Hily-Blant & Falgarone 2009: a parsec-scale coherent intermittent structure
- Hily-Blant et al 2008: structure functions of the velocity field up to order 6; this was the first evidence for the role of solenoidal forcing as shown by Federrath et al 2009.
The interstellar heritage of planetary systems
Overview
Questions
- Origin of the volatile composition of protoplanetary disks: interstellar inheritance or full reset?
- The ONISYS project
- What is the origin of nitrogen in comets ?
- In which forms were nitrogen volatiles recorded in cosmomaterials ?
Methods
- Observations (ALMA, IRAM, etc)
- Isotopic ratios
- Disk modelling
Recent results
- A new scenario for the origin of nitrogen in the solar system (A&A article)
- Observations of the disk orbiting TW Hya with ALMA
- Measure the radial dependence of the nitrogen isotopic ratio in CN and HCN
- See the A&A highlight and here for a non-specialist overview.
People
Name | Affiliation |
---|---|
Lydie Bonal | IPAG |
Alexandre Faure | IPAG |
Thierry Forveille | IPAG |
Joel Kastner | Rochester Institute of Technology |
Victor Magalhaes de Souza | IRAM Grenoble |
François Ménard | IPAG |
Guillaume Pineau des Forêts | IAS, Obs. de Paris |
Olivier Poch | IPAG |
Eric Quirico | IPAG |
Claire Rist | IPAG |
Véronique Vuitton | IPAG |
Workshops
- Comets: dynamics, nuclei and coma
- Astrochemistry: Isotopic ratios, gas-phase chemical networks and high-energy interactions
Astrochemistry
Team
Name | Affiliation |
---|---|
Alexandre Faure | IPAG |
Claire Rist | IPAG |
Guillaume Pineau des Forêts | IAS, Obs. de Paris |
David Flower | Durham University |
Romane Le Gal | Center for Astrophysics |
Chemical networks
- UGAN chemical network
- The ortho-to-para ratio of water in interstellar clouds (Faure et al 2019)
- Modelling the molecular composition and nuclear-spin chemistry of collapsing pre-stellar sources (Hily-Blant et al 2018):
- Interstellar chemistry of nitrogen hydrides in dark clouds (Le Gal et al 2014)
- HYDRIDES ANR project (2014-2018, Faure et al)
- Workshops, Schools
Tips and tricks
For the non-geek scientist
Useful links
- Physics oriented
- Computer related