Chemistry and radiative transfer of water in cold, dense clouds

The Herschel Space Observatory's recent detections of water vapour in the cold, dense cloud L1544 allow a direct comparison between observations and chemical models for oxygen species in conditions just before star formation. We explain a chemical model for gas-phase water, simplified for the limited number of reactions or processes that are active in extreme cold (< 15 K). In this model, water is removed from the gas phase by freezing on to grains and by photodissociation. Water is formed as ice on the surface of dust grains from O and OH and released into the gas phase by photodesorption. The reactions are fast enough with respect to the slow dynamical evolution of L1544 that the gas-phase water is in equilibrium for the local conditions throughout the cloud. We explain the paradoxical radiative transfer of the H2O (1(10)-1(01)) line. Despite discouragingly high optical depth caused by the large Einstein A coefficient, the subcritical excitation in the cold, rarefied H-2 causes the line brightness to scale linearly with column density. Thus, the water line can provide information on the chemical and dynamical processes in the darkest region in the centre of a cold, dense cloud. The inverse P-Cygni profile of the observed water line generally indicates a contracting cloud. This profile is reproduced with a dynamical model of slow contraction from unstable quasi-static hydrodynamic equilibrium (an unstable Bonnor-Ebert sphere).