Colloquium on Jul. 9, 2020

Hydrogenated Fullerenes (FullerAnes) in space

Speaker: Yong Zhang (SYSU)

Venue: Video Conference

Time: 15:00 PM, Thursday, Jul. 9, 2020

Abstract: 

Fullerenes and their derivatives have been proposed to explain unidentified astronomical features since the laboratory synthesis of C60 in 1985. Recently, successful identifications of C60, C70, and C60+ in circumstellar and interstellar environments suggested that fullerenes might play an important role on astrochemistry, and re-stimulated interests in searching for various fullerene derivatives in space. Hydrogenated fullerene (fullerAne) is one of the most important fullerene derivatives and is very likely to coexist with fullerenes. In this talk, I will review previous proposals of fullerAnes as the carrier of astronomical features, such as the extinction bump, the diffuse interstellar bands, the extended red emission, the unidentified infrared bands, the anomalous microwave emission, and the 21 micron feature. I will also report the recent progress of searching for astronomical fullerAnes.