Deuterium Fractionation in Interstellar Clouds

This paper reviews the chemical processes responsible for fractionating deuterium in interstellar molecules. I show that this process is intrinsically a low temperature phenomenon and discuss how the degree of enhancement of the deuterium content of molecules is related to the physical conditions, particularly abundances, in molecular clouds. If significant amounts of abundant species, such as CO, are frozen out on to interstellar dust grains, the resulting enhancement in H₂D⁺ can result in its abundance being greater than that of H ₃ ⁺ at 10K. Transfer of the deuteron from H₂D⁺ can then lead to the efficient formation of multiply deuterated species, such as NHD₂ and ND₃. Fractionation can also occur in grain surface reactions and some simple models are discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.