40 years have passed since the first molecular detection outside our Galaxy. Since then, our knowledge on the distribution, kinematics and composition of the molecular material in the extragalactic ISM has built up significantly based not only on the carbon monoxide observations but also in the more than 50 molecular species detected. In particular, line surveys have been proven to be excellent tools to study the chemical composition in the nuclei of galaxies. Such studies have been favored by the increasing instantaneous bandwidth of current mm and sub-mm facilities. Here I will summarize the highlights of extragalactic molecular spectroscopy, mostly focusing in the results from molecular line surveys published in the last few years as well as the aims of still ongoing projects.

Bipolar outflows constitute some of the best laboratories to study shock chemistry in the interstellar medium. A number of molecular species have their abundance enhanced by several orders of magnitude in the outflow gas, likely as a combined result of dust mantle disruption and high temperature gas chemistry, and therefore become sensitive indicators of the physical changes taking place in the shock. Identifying these species and understanding their chemical behavior is therefore of high interest both to chemical studies and to our understanding of the star-formation process. Here we review some of the recent progress in the study of the molecular composition of bipolar outflows, with emphasis in the tracers most relevant for shock chemistry. As we discuss, there has been rapid progress both in characterizing the molecular composition of certain outflows as well as in modeling the chemical processes likely involved. However, a number of limitations still affect our understanding of outflow chemistry. These include a very limited statistical approach in the observations and a dependence of the models on plane-parallel shocks, which cannot reproduce the observed wing morphology of the lines. We finish our contribution by discussing the chemistry of the so-called extremely high velocity component, which seems different from the rest of the outflow and may originate in the wind from the very vicinity of the protostar.

The chemistry of the early Universe is a fascinating field of study. Even in the absence of any elements heavier than lithium, a surprising degree of chemical complexity proves to be possible, giving the topic considerable interest in its own right. In addition, the fact that molecular hydrogen plays a key role in the formation of the first stars and galaxies means that if we want to understand the formation of these objects, we must first develop a good understanding of the chemical evolution of the gas. In this review, I first give a brief introduction to the chemistry occurring in the gas prior to the formation of the first stars and galaxies, and then go on to discuss in more detail the main chemical processes occurring during the gravitational collapse of gas from intergalactic to protostellar densities, and how these processes influence the final outcome of the collapse.

The insoluble organic material preserved in primitive chondritic meteorites shares many similarities with the refractory organic material in interplanetary dust particles and comets, suggesting that there is a genetic link between the organic matter in objects that formed between ~3 AU and ~30 AU from the Sun. These similarities include large D and 15N enrichments in bulk and even more extreme enrichments in isotopic hotspots. The enrichments attest to formation in very cold environments, either in the outer Solar System or the protosolar molecular cloud. There are many properties of this organic material that are consistent with an interstellar origin, but a Solar System origin cannot be ruled out. Similar organic material is presumably an important component of most protoplanetary disks, and heating or sputtering of this material would be a source of PAHs in disks. The soluble organic matter was more heavily effected by processes on the chondritic parent bodies than the insoluble material. Amino acids, for instance, probably formed by reaction of ketones and aldehydes with NH3 and HCN. The accretion of the relatively volatile NH3 and HCN, presumably in ices, strengthens the chondrite-comet connection. However, unlike most comets the water in chondrites, when it was accreted, had D/H ratios that were similar to or depleted relative to Earth.

The first molecules detected at infrared wavelengths in the ejecta of a Type II supernova, namely SN1987A, consisted of CO and SiO. Since then, confirmation of the formation of these two species in several other supernovae a few hundred days after explosion has been obtained. However, supernova environments appear to hamper the synthesis of large, complex species due to the lack of microscopically-mixed hydrogen deep in supernova cores. Because these environments also form carbon and silicate dust, it is of importance to understand the role played by molecules in the depletion of elements and how chemical species get incorporated into dust grains. In the present paper, we review our current knowledge of the molecular component of supernova ejecta, and present new trends and results on the synthesis of molecules in these harsh, explosive events.

The interstellar medium constitutes a physically and chemically complex component of galaxies and is important in the cycle of matter and the evolution of stars. From various spectroscopic clues we now know that the interstellar medium is rich in organic compounds. However, identifying the exact nature of all these components remains a challenge. In particular the identification of the so-called diffuse band carriers has been alluding astronomers for almost a century.

In recent decades, observational, experimental and theoretical advances have rapidly lead to renewed interest in the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs). This has been instigated partly by their perceived relation to the infrared aromatic emission bands, the UV extinction bump and far-UV rise, and the growing number of (small) organic molecules identified in space.

This chapter gives an overview of the observational properties and behaviour of the DIBs, and their presence throughout the Universe. I will highlight recent progress in identifying their carriers and discuss their potential as tracers and probes of (extra)-Galactic ISM conditions.

The number of contributions to the Symposium was so high that only the review and invited talks have found place, in the form of articles, in this volume. This Appendix lists all these additional contributions (oral and posters) which are not present as articles. The abstracts of all contributions were published in a booklet produced by the Local Organizing Committee and are available at the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). More information on these contributions (PowerPoint presentations and/or articles) have been made public in the Internet web site of the conference (http://cab.inta-csic.es/molecular_universe/).

Stars like our Sun and planets like our Earth form in dense regions within interstellar molecular clouds, called pre-stellar cores (PSCs). PSCs provide the initial conditions in the process of star and planet formation. In the past 15 years, detailed observations of (low-mass) PSCs in nearby molecular cloud complexes have allowed us to find that they are cold (T < 10K) and quiescent (molecular line widths are close to thermal), with a chemistry profoundly affected by molecular freeze-out onto dust grains. In these conditions, deuterated molecules flourish, becoming the best tools to unveil the PSC physical and chemical structure. Despite their apparent simplicity, PSCs still offer puzzles to solve and they are far from being completely understood. For example, what is happening to the gas and dust in their nuclei (the future stellar cradles) is still a mystery that awaits for ALMA. Other important questions are: how do different environments and external conditions affect the PSC physical/chemical structure? Are PSCs in high-mass star forming regions similar to the well-known low-mass PSCs? Here I review observational and theoretical work on PSCs in nearby molecular cloud complexes and the ongoing search and study of massive PSCs embedded in infrared dark clouds (IRDCs), which host the initial conditions for stellar cluster and high-mass star formation.

It has been a long standing problem in astrochemistry to explain how molecules can form in a highly dilute environment such as the interstellar medium. In the last decennium more and more evidence has been found that the observed mix of small and complex, stable and highly transient species in space is the cumulative result of gas phase and solid state reactions as well as gas-grain interactions. Solid state reactions on icy dust grains are specifically found to play an important role in the formation of the more complex “organic” compounds. In order to investigate the underlying physical and chemical processes detailed laboratory based experiments are needed that simulate surface reactions triggered by processes as different as thermal heating, photon (UV) irradiation and particle (atom, cosmic ray, electron) bombardment of interstellar ice analogues. Here, some of the latest research performed in the Sackler Laboratory for Astrophysics in Leiden, the Netherlands is reviewed. The focus is on hydrogenation, i.e., H-atom addition reactions and vacuum ultraviolet irradiation of interstellar ice analogues at astronomically relevant temperatures. It is shown that solid state processes are crucial in the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium, providing pathways towards molecular complexity in space.

There remain many fundamental unanswered questions about protoplanetary disks, including how (and if?) they form planets, how mass is transferred through the disk and onto the star, and how they ultimately disperse. Also, a major goal of protoplanetary disk studies is to understand the relationship between disk properties and the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems. IR molecular spectroscopy is a particularly powerful tool for probing the conditions and physical process in protoplanetary disks, which are too small and close to their parent stars to be imaged with ease. I will discuss the suite of infrared molecular transitions observed to date, which highlight the following three techniques of IR spectroscopy. Firstly, line shapes and strengths can be used as tracers of disk physics, including volatile condensation/evaporation, photo-processes, grain growth and turbulence. Secondly, observations of multiple molecular abundances provide constraints for disk chemical models, which may ultimately help explain the great diversity of planetary bodies. Finally, resolved line shapes and spectro-astrometry provide a means to study disk structure on extremely small size scales. Because IR observations are typically sensitive to radii of a few AU or smaller, the processes and structures being probed are relevant to the birth and growth of terrestrial and giant planets. Recent results that I will highlight include the discovery of a multitude of molecules in disks around sun-like stars (including H2O, OH, HCN, C2H2 and CO2), with detection rates that depend on stellar mass, constraints on gas mass and location in transitional disks, detection and characterization of ‘snow lines’, measurements of inner disk rims, and detections of inner disk asymmetries. I will also discuss how IR spectroscopy will remain relevant even with the emergence of facilities such as ALMA, as it allows us to connect the conditions in terrestrial-planet-forming regions with those in the cold outer reaches of disks, and to better construct a comprehensive understanding of the nature of protoplanetary disks.

There has been great progress in recent years in discovering star forming galaxies at high redshifts (z > 5), close to the epoch of reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The WFC3 and ACS cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope have enabled Lyman break galaxies to be robustly identified, but the UV luminosity function and star formation rate density of this population at z = 6 − 8 seems to be much lower than at z = 2 − 4. High escape fractions and a large contribution from faint galaxies below our current detection limits would be required for star-forming galaxies to reionize the Universe. We have also found that these galaxies have blue rest-frame UV colours, which might indicate lower dust extinction at z > 5. There has been some spectroscopic confirmation of these Lyman break galaxies through Lyman-α emission, but the fraction of galaxies where we see this line drops at z > 7, perhaps due to the onset of the Gunn-Peterson effect (where the IGM is opaque to Lyman-α).

Photospheric thermal radiation components from gamma-ray burst (GRB) jets are estimated based on relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of jet propagation. The light curves and spectra are derived, considering viewing angle effects. The light curves exhibit several seconds time variability and the luminosity is as large as that of GRB prompt emission. For observers at a viewing angle of several degrees the spectra below the peak energy are much softer than that of Planck distribution and close to typical GRB spectrum. Whereas the spectra for observers at small viewing angle are hard and close to Planck distribution. Numerical Amati and Yonetoku relations are reproduced.

We present results of the simulation of a magneto-rotational supernova explosion. We show that, due to the differential rotation of the collapsing iron core, the magnetic field increases with time. The magnetic field transfers angular momentum and a MHD shock wave forms. This shock wave produces the supernova explosion. The explosion energy computed in our simulations is 0.5-2.5 ċ 1051erg. We used two different equations of state for the simulations. The results are rather similar.

SN1987A is the best-studied core-collapse supernova in the sky. We know what the progenitor was, what the circumstellar environment was, and what the explosion looked like over a broad electromagnetic bandpass and in neutrinos. For over a decade, the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been monitoring SN1987A on a regular basis, obtaining resolved images of the developing interaction with the circumstellar material, as well as high resolution grating spectroscopy of the X-ray emission. We highlight the latest results from this campaign and discuss the overall picture of the remnant's structure that emerges from these observations.

We present the results of over two decades of radio observations of type IIb Supernovae with the Very Large Array and the Australia Telescope Compact Array. These radio studies illustrate the need for multi-wavelength follow-up to determine the progenitor scenario for type IIb events.

Observations of the first light from a stellar explosion can open a window to a wealth of information on the progenitor system and the explosion itself. Here I briefly discuss the theoretical expectation of that emission, comparing Newtonian and relativistic breakouts. The former takes place in regular core-collapse supernovae (SNe) while the latter is expected in SNe that are associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), extremely energetic SNe (e.g., SN2007bi) and white dwarf explosions (e.g., type Ia and .Ia SNe, accretion induced collapse). I present the characteristic observable signatures of both types of breakouts, when spherical. Finally, I discuss Newtonian shock breakouts through wind, which produce a very luminous signal, with an X-ray component that is weak around the breakout, and becomes brighter afterwards.

Gamma-ray bursts are normally split into two classes, primarily determined by their observed duration, so called long (> 2s) and short (< 2s) GRBs. There have been many claims of a third duration class, with emission lasting for intermediate periods between 2 - 5s, although the reality of this class remains controversial. Here, we investigate this further utilising the 2.9s duration, spectrally hard GRB 100816A. This burst lies well offset from its host galaxy, has no evidence for an associated supernova (albeit to only moderately constraining limits), and has properties which appear to be genuinely intermediate between long- and short- population bursts. We extend this analysis by comparing the physical locations of a population of intermediate duration GRBs with those of short-GRBs and long-GRBs, concluding that the intermediate sample is indistinguishable from the long-GRB population, whose locations are very different from other transients.