THE CHEMISTRY OF VIBRATIONALLY EXCITED H2 IN THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM

The internal energy available in vibrationally excited H-2 molecules can be used to overcome or diminish the activation barrier of various chemical reactions of interest for molecular astrophysics. In this paper, we investigate in detail the impact on the chemical composition of interstellar clouds of the reactions of vibrationally excited H-2 with C+, He+, O, OH, and CN, based on the available chemical kinetics data. It is found that the reaction of H-2 (v > 0) and C+ has a profound impact on the abundances of some molecules, especially CH+, which is a direct product and is readily formed in astronomical regions with fractional abundances of vibrationally excited H-2, relative to the ground state H-2, in excess of similar to 10(-6), independently of whether the gas is hot or not. The effects of these reactions on the chemical composition of the diffuse clouds zeta Oph and HD 34078, the dense photon-dominated region (PDR) Orion Bar, the planetary nebula NGC 7027, and the circumstellar disk around the B9 star HD 176386 are investigated through PDR models. We find that formation of CH+ is especially favored in dense and highly FUV illuminated regions such as the Orion Bar and the planetary nebula NGC 7027, where column densities in excess of 10(13) cm(-2) are predicted. In diffuse clouds, however, this mechanism is found to be not efficient enough to form CH+ with a column density close to the values derived from astronomical observations.