How do stars and planets form? What chemical ingredients are available to build them? What causes the diversity in exoplanetary systems, none of which look like our own solar system? These are fundamental questions that can be addressed only now with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), consisting of 66 radio antennas operating in the 0.4-3 mm wavelength range and surpassing previous instruments by at least 2 orders of magnitude in sensitivity and spatial resolution..<br/><br/>ALMA has opened its scientific eyes in 2011, with all antennas in operation since early 2014. This talk will summarize early scientific highlights on the chemistry associated with the formation of stars and planets deep inside dark interstellar clouds. These regions form a unique chemical laboratory, with a wide variety of molecules detected. ALMA can zoom into the hot cores and the planet-forming zones of disks around young stars for the first time. ALMA is no longer limited to the brightest regions (Orion, SgrB2) but can also probe the chemical inventory of young analogs of the Sun. A very rich chemistry is found, including the detection of organic molecules such as sugar and amine containing species as well as water (key molecules for building life). These molecules are mostly formed on the surfaces of interstellar grains and recent laboratory experiments and modeling studies of gas-grain chemistry will be highlighted in relation to the ALMA data.

Complex organic molecules in star-forming regions: Sweet results from ALMA

249th National Meeting (2015)

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