Doctoral Dissertations

Mohammad Saki

Abstract

“Knowledge of the initial conditions present in the early solar nebula is required to understand the evolution and its current volatile content. Comets were some of the first objects to accrete in the solar nebula. They are among the most pristine (primitive) remnants of the solar system formation, and their present-day volatile composition likely reflects the composition and conditions where (and when) they formed. Therefore, they are fossils of the solar system formation. High-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy is a valuable tool for sampling the parent volatile (i.e., ices subliming directly from the nucleus) composition of comets via analysis of fluorescence emission in cometary comae.

An overall goal of comet volatile composition studies is determining whether comets can be classified based on their volatile content and what this reveals about the history of the early solar system. Early work produced encouraging results, but recent work has left questions regarding whether a compositional taxonomy based on near-infrared measurements is feasible. These include questions such as: Are observed systematic compositional differences between Jupiter-family comets and Oort cloud comets the result of evolutionary effects or reflective of formative conditions? Is temporal variability in coma composition a common phenomenon, and if so, how can present-day measurements be related to natal solar system conditions? Can we place comet volatile compositions in a meaningful context? In this work we examine these questions in the context of near-infrared measurements of Oort cloud comets and Jupiter-family comets, as well as a comparison between our results and extensive results from the Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko”--Abstract, page iv.

Advisor(s)

Gibb, Erika
Saito, Shun

Committee Member(s)

Bonev, Boncho
Wilking, Bruce
Yamilov, Alexey

Department(s)

Physics

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Physics

Comments

A dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the Missouri University of Science and Technology and University of Missouri--St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Physics

The work has been generously supported by National Science Foundation (Grants: AST-1616306, AST- 161544, AST-200939, AST-2009910).

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Summer 2021

Journal article titles appearing in thesis/dissertation

  • Carbonyl sulfide (OCS): Detections in comets C/2002 T7 (linear), C/2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS), AND 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and stringent upper-limits in 46P/Wirtanen
  • Chemical composition of outbursting comet C/2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS)

Pagination

xiii, 119 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographic references.

Rights

© 2021 Mohammad Saki, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 11920

Electronic OCLC #

1286684440

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