Solid Interstellar Radical Chemistry

Our 48 month-long project is proposed by two complementary experimental teams (LERMA, Cergy–Pontoise (surface reactivity) and PIIM, Marseille (bulk ice reactivity)), and one team expert in astrochemical modeling (and observations) (IPAG, Grenoble). The three teams involved in this proposal have been working separately for several years at the forefront of astrochemistry, on the same fundamental topic: How is the molecular richness of our Universe initiated and propagated? Faced with the failure of the present astrochemical models to account for observations, our community believes that only joint efforts of laboratory astrophysics (and especially grain-surface  and quantum chemistry) coupled with simulations and observations will be able to definitively answer to the question.