Experimental astrochemistry – A journey from India to ATOMKI

Seminar Experimental astrochemistry – A journey from India to ATOMKI
Lecturer

Rahul Kumar Kushwaha

Atomki
Time 2022-02-10 11:00
Place Atomki, nagyelőadó (Debrecen, Bem tér 18/c, XII. épület 3. emelet)
Description of event

In this seminar, I will shortly introduce myself, my country of origin and the interesting research topic I deal with.

Astrochemistry is an interdisciplinary field of astronomy and chemistry to understand the presence, abundance and chemical evolution of molecules in the interstellar medium and on the planetary bodies in the Solar System. The energetic processing of simple molecules may evolve into complex molecules, for example precursors of biomolecules. To understand the chemical evolution in the laboratory, an experimental setup is required to mimic the astrochemical conditions, an energetic source for irradiation and various spectroscopic techniques to probe the chemical changes.

During my PhD, I worked on developing astrochemistry setup and temperature-dependent infrared spectroscopy of astrochemical ices at Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad (India) and carried out various experiments on photo-processing of astrochemical ices at a synchrotron facility in Taiwan.

Here at ATOMKI I work on the astrochemistry setup at ECR beamline to study energetic ion interaction with astrochemical ices.