Chemical Kinetics of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Comet Impacts

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are stable, robust organic compounds that would have been an important constituent of the early atmospheres of terrestrial planets. These strongly-bound molecules readily absorb ultraviolet light and may play a role in aerosol formation. PAHs are one of the predominant carriers of carbon in interstellar space, after CO. They are common in carbonaceous chondrites, and quite likely in comets as well. Impacts of volatile-rich planetesimals such as carbonaceous chondrites and comets would have been common during the late stages of planet formation. Theoretical studies of impact chemistry typically assume that the chemical composition of the post-impact material is given by thermodynamic equilibrium at 2000 K. These calculations also typically ignore the formation of aromatic compounds because the closure of the first aromatic ring is kinetically inhibited, although thermodynamically favorable at the temperatures and pressures of an impact fireball. Do the PAHs present in a comet or asteroid survive impact? If so, how are these PAHs modified during impact? To address these questions, we model the chemical kinetics of PAH survival, formation, growth and destruction within a parameter space consisting of impact fireball cooling timescales, pressures, temperatures, C/O ratios and other factors. The chemistry of PAHs has been well studied under conditions present in plug flow reactors and sooting flames (P ≈ 1atm, T≥ 1000 K). We hope that our results will motivate more experimental investigation of reaction mechanisms and rate coefficients for a broader range of temperatures and pressures than those heretofore studied for industrial applications. This work has been supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Virtual Planetary Laboratory and the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.