Titan ionospheric chemistry
Résumé
We describe results of a concerted research effort held in “Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble” and "Laboratoire de Chimie Physique", where experimentalists as well as theoreticians, have developed laboratory tools in order to measure accurate rates of ion molecule reactions, and tools to estimate the uncertainty propagation in the models of Titan Ionospheric Chemistry, which are becoming increasingly complex. Laboratory measurement results will be presented for energy-selected (internal and translational energy) ion-molecule reactions and doubly charged molecular ion reactions. We will also present a new project with an experimental set-up, which will be installed in a near future in "Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble". A very high-resolution mass spectrometer is proposed to study the Titan ionosphere Chemistry, in particular the molecular growth paths leading to big molecular ions observed by the INMS instrument on board Cassini. A parallel modeling effort with uncertainty analysis will be conducted in Orsay and Grenoble.