415 research outputs found
First measurements of 15N fractionation in N2H+ toward high-mass star forming cores
We report on the first measurements of the isotopic ratio 14N/15N in N2H+
toward a statistically significant sample of high-mass star forming cores. The
sources belong to the three main evolutionary categories of the high-mass star
formation process: high-mass starless cores, high-mass protostellar objects,
and ultracompact HII regions. Simultaneous measurements of 14N/15N in CN have
been made. The 14N/15N ratios derived from N2H+ show a large spread (from ~180
up to ~1300), while those derived from CN are in between the value measured in
the terrestrial atmosphere (~270) and that of the proto-Solar nebula (~440) for
the large majority of the sources within the errors. However, this different
spread might be due to the fact that the sources detected in the N2H+
isotopologues are more than those detected in the CN ones. The 14N/15N ratio
does not change significantly with the source evolutionary stage, which
indicates that time seems to be irrelevant for the fractionation of nitrogen.
We also find a possible anticorrelation between the 14N/15N (as derived from
N2H+) and the H/D isotopic ratios. This suggests that 15N enrichment could not
be linked to the parameters that cause D enrichment, in agreement with the
prediction by recent chemical models. These models, however, are not able to
reproduce the observed large spread in 14N/15N, pointing out that some
important routes of nitrogen fractionation could be still missing in the
models.Comment: 2 Figures, accepted for publication in ApJ
A gas-rich AGN near the centre of a galaxy cluster at z ~ 1.4
The formation of the first virialized structures in overdensities dates back
to ~9 Gyr ago, i.e. in the redshift range z ~ 1.4 - 1.6. Some models of
structure formation predict that the star formation activity in clusters was
high at that epoch, implying large reservoirs of cold molecular gas. Aiming at
finding a trace of this expected high molecular gas content in primeval
clusters, we searched for the 12CO(2-1) line emission in the most luminous
active galactic nucleus (AGN) of the cluster around the radio galaxy 7C
1756+6520 at z ~ 1.4, one of the farthest spectroscopic confirmed clusters.
This AGN, called AGN.1317, is located in the neighbourhood of the central radio
galaxy at a projected distance of ~780 kpc. The IRAM Plateau de Bure
Interferometer was used to investigate the molecular gas quantity in AGN.1317,
observing the 12CO(2-1) emission line. We detect CO emission in an AGN
belonging to a galaxy cluster at z ~ 1.4. We measured a molecular gas mass of
1.1 x 10^10 Msun, comparable to that found in submillimeter galaxies. In
optical images, AGN.1317 does not seem to be part of a galaxy interaction or
merger.We also derived the nearly instantaneous star formation rate (SFR) from
Halpha flux obtaining a SFR ~65 Msun/yr. This suggests that AGN.1317 is
actively forming stars and will exhaust its reservoir of cold gas in ~0.2-1.0
Gyr.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Protonated CO2 in massive star-forming clumps
Interstellar CO2 is an important reservoir of carbon and oxygen, and one of
the major constituents of the icy mantles of dust grains, but it is not
observable directly in the cold gas because has no permanent dipole moment. Its
protonated form, HOCO+, is believed to be a good proxy for gaseous CO2.
However, it has been detected in only a few star-forming regions so far, so
that its interstellar chemistry is not well understood. We present new
detections of HOCO+ lines in 11 high-mass star-forming clumps. Our observations
increase by more than three times the number of detections in star-forming
regions so far. We have derived beam-averaged abundances relative to H2 in
between 0.3 and 3.8 x 10^{-11}. We have compared these values with the
abundances of H13CO+, a possible gas-phase precursor of HOCO+, and CH3OH, a
product of surface chemistry. We have found a positive correlation with H13CO+,
while with CH3OH there is no correlation. We suggest that the gas-phase
formation route starting from HCO+ plays an important role in the formation of
HOCO+, perhaps more relevant than protonation of CO2 (upon evaporation of this
latter from icy dust mantles).Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRA
Deuteration as an evolutionary tracer in massive-star formation
Theory predicts, and observations confirm, that the column density ratio of a
molecule containing D to its counterpart containing H can be used as an
evolutionary tracer in the low-mass star formation process. Since it remains
unclear if the high-mass star formation process is a scaled-up version of the
low-mass one, we investigated whether the relation between deuteration and
evolution can be applied to the high-mass regime. With the IRAM-30m telescope,
we observed rotational transitions of N2D+ and N2H+ and derived the deuterated
fraction in 27 cores within massive star-forming regions understood to
represent different evolutionary stages of the massive-star formation process.
Results. Our results clearly indicate that the abundance of N2D+ is higher at
the pre-stellar/cluster stage, then drops during the formation of the
protostellar object(s) as in the low-mass regime, remaining relatively constant
during the ultra-compact HII region phase. The objects with the highest
fractional abundance of N2D+ are starless cores with properties very similar to
typical pre-stellar cores of lower mass. The abundance of N2D+ is lower in
objects with higher gas temperatures as in the low-mass case but does not seem
to depend on gas turbulence. Our results indicate that the N2D+-to-N2H+ column
density ratio can be used as an evolutionary indicator in both low- and
high-mass star formation, and that the physical conditions influencing the
abundance of deuterated species likely evolve similarly during the processes
that lead to the formation of both low- and high-mass stars.Comment: Accepted by A&AL, 4 pages, 2 figures, 2 appendices (one for Tables,
one for additional figures
The L1157-B1 astrochemical laboratory: testing the origin of DCN
L1157-B1 is the brightest shocked region of the large-scale molecular
outflow, considered the prototype of chemically rich outflows, being the ideal
laboratory to study how shocks affect the molecular gas. Several deuterated
molecules have been previously detected with the IRAM 30m, most of them formed
on grain mantles and then released into the gas phase due to the shock. We aim
to observationally investigate the role of the different chemical processes at
work that lead to formation the of DCN and test the predictions of the chemical
models for its formation. We performed high-angular resolution observations
with NOEMA of the DCN(2-1) and H13CN(2-1) lines to compute the deuterated
fraction, Dfrac(HCN). We detected emission of DCN(2-1) and H13CN(2-1) arising
from L1157-B1 shock. Dfrac(HCN) is ~4x10 and given the uncertainties, we
did not find significant variations across the bow-shock. Contrary to HDCO,
whose emission delineates the region of impact between the jet and the ambient
material, DCN is more widespread and not limited to the impact region. This is
consistent with the idea that gas-phase chemistry is playing a major role in
the deuteration of HCN in the head of the bow-shock, where HDCO is undetected
as it is a product of grain-surface chemistry. The spectra of DCN and H13CN
match the spectral signature of the outflow cavity walls, suggesting that their
emission result from shocked gas. The analysis of the time dependent gas-grain
chemical model UCL-CHEM coupled with a C-type shock model shows that the
observed Dfrac(HCN) is reached during the post-shock phase, matching the
dynamical timescale of the shock. Our results indicate that the presence of DCN
in L1157-B1 is a combination of gas-phase chemistry that produces the
widespread DCN emission, dominating in the head of the bow-shock, and
sputtering from grain mantles toward the jet impact region.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 7 pages, 5 Figures, 1 Tabl
Search for massive protostellar candidates in the southern hemisphere: I. Association with dense gas
(Abridged) We have observed CS and C17O lines, and 1.2 mm cont. emission
towards a sample of 130 high-mass protostellar candidates with DEC<-30 deg.
This is the first step of the southern extension of a project started more than
a decade ago aimed at the identification of massive protostellar candidates. We
selected from the IRAS PSC 429 sources which potentially are compact molecular
clouds. The sample is divided into two groups: the 298 sources with
[25-12]>0.57 and [60-12]>1.30 we call 'High' sources, the remaining 131 we call
'Low' sources. In this paper, we check the association with dense gas and dust
in 130 'Low' sources. We find a detection rate of ca. 85% in CS, demonstrating
a tight association with dense molecular clumps. Among the sources detected in
CS, ca. 76% have also been detected in C17O and ca. 93% in the 1.2 mm cont.
Mm-cont. maps show the presence of clumps with diameters 0.2-2 pc and masses
from a few Msun to 10^5 Msun; H2 volume densities lie between ca. 10^{4.5} and
10^{5.5} cm^{-3}. The L(bol) are 10^3-10^6 Lsun, consistent with embedded
high-mass objects. Based on our results and those found in the literature for
other samples, we conclude that our sources are massive objects probably in a
stage prior to the formation of an HII region. We propose a scenario in which
'High' and 'Low' sources are both made of a massive clump hosting a high-mass
protostellar candidate and a nearby stellar cluster. The difference might be
due to the fact that the IRAS 12mu flux, the best discriminant between the two
groups, is dominated by the emission from the cluster in 'Lows' and from the
massive protostellar object in 'Highs'.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astron. & Astroph.; 34 pages (incl. 14
figures and 8 tables
On the chemical ladder of esters. Detection and formation of ethyl formate in the W51 e2 hot molecular core
The detection of organic molecules with increasing complexity and potential
biological relevance is opening the possibility to understand the formation of
the building blocks of life in the interstellar medium. One of the families of
molecules with astrobiological interest are the esters, whose simplest member,
methyl formate, is rather abundant in star-forming regions. The next step in
the chemical complexity of esters is ethyl formate, CHOCHO. Only two
detections of this species have been reported so far, which strongly limits our
understanding of how complex molecules are formed in the interstellar medium.
We have searched for ethyl formate towards the W51 e2 hot molecular core, one
of the most chemically rich sources in the Galaxy and one of the most promising
regions to study prebiotic chemistry, especially after the recent discovery of
the PO bond, key in the formation of DNA. We have analyzed a spectral line
survey towards the W51 e2 hot molecular core, which covers 44 GHz in the 1, 2
and 3 mm bands, carried out with the IRAM 30m telescope. We report the
detection of the trans and gauche conformers of ethyl formate. A Local
Thermodynamic Equilibrium analysis indicates that the excitation temperature is
7810 K and that the two conformers have similar source-averaged column
densities of (2.00.3)10 cm and an abundance of
10. We compare the observed molecular abundances of ethyl formate
with different competing chemical models based on grain surface and gas-phase
chemistry. We propose that grain-surface chemistry may have a dominant role in
the formation of ethyl formate (and other complex organic molecules) in hot
molecular cores, rather than reactions in the gas phase.Comment: Accepted in A&A; 11 pages, 6 figures, 7 Table
Highly deuterated pre-stellar cores in a high-mass star formation region
We have observed the deuterated gas in the high-mass star formation region
IRAS 05345+3157 at high-angular resolution, in order to determine the
morphology and the nature of such gas. We have mapped the N2H+ (1-0) line with
the Plateau de Bure Interferometer, and the N2D+ (3-2) and N2H+ (3-2) lines
with the Submillimeter Array. The N2D+ (3-2) integrated emission is
concentrated in two condensations, with masses of 2-3 and 9 M_sun and diameters
of 0.05 and 0.09 pc, respectively. The high deuterium fractionation (0.1) and
the line parameters in the N2D+ condensations indicate that they are likely
low- to intermediate-mass pre-stellar cores, even though other scenarios are
possible.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
First ALMA maps of HCO, an important precursor of complex organic molecules, towards IRAS 16293-2422
The formyl radical HCO has been proposed as the basic precursor of many
complex organic molecules such as methanol (CHOH) or glycolaldehyde
(CHOHCHO). Using ALMA, we have mapped, for the first time at high angular
resolution (1, 140 au), HCO towards the Solar-type
protostellar binary IRAS 162932422, where numerous complex organic molecules
have been previously detected. We also detected several lines of the chemically
related species HCO, CHOH and CHOHCHO. The observations revealed
compact HCO emission arising from the two protostars. The line profiles also
show redshifted absorption produced by foreground material of the circumbinary
envelope that is infalling towards the protostars. Additionally, IRAM 30m
single-dish data revealed a more extended HCO component arising from the common
circumbinary envelope. The comparison between the observed molecular abundances
and our chemical model suggests that whereas the extended HCO from the envelope
can be formed via gas-phase reactions during the cold collapse of the natal
core, the HCO in the hot corinos surrounding the protostars is predominantly
formed by the hydrogenation of CO on the surface of dust grains and subsequent
thermal desorption during the protostellar phase. The derived abundance of HCO
in the dust grains is high enough to produce efficiently more complex species
such as HCO, CHOH, and CHOHCHO by surface chemistry. We found that
the main formation route of CHOHCHO is the reaction between HCO and
CHOH.Comment: Accepted in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society; 19
pages, 12 figures, 7 table
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