Molecules in Outflows from Young Stellar Objects

Bipolar outflows from young stellar objects are excellent laboratories to study shock chemistry in the interstellar medium. Observations show that a number of molecular species suffer order-of-magnitude abundance enhancements in the outflow gas, likely due to a combination of dust-mantle disruption and high-temperature gas chemistry. The study of these enhanced species is of great interest to characterize shock chemistry. It also offers a highly selective tool to trace the interaction between the outflow and the cloud, which is necessary to elucidate the still mysterious nature of the outflow driving wind. This contribution reviews some of the recent progress in the study of the molecular composition of bipolar outflows with emphasis on the tracers most relevant for shock chemistry and on the new data from the Herschel Space Observatory.