In this paper, we report the detection of a series of radio recombination
lines (RRLs) in absorption near 26 MHz arising from the largest bound carbon
atoms detected in space. These atoms, which are more than a million times
larger than the ground state atoms are undergoing delta transitions (n~1009,
Delta n=4) in the cool tenuous medium located in the Perseus arm in front of
the supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A. Theoretical estimates had shown that atoms
which recombined in tenuous media are stable up to quantum levels n~1500. Our
data indicates that we have detected radiation from atoms in states very close
to this theoretical limit. We also report high signal-to-noise detections of
alpha, beta and gamma transitions in carbon atoms arising in the same clouds.
In these data, we find that the increase in line widths with quantum number
(proportional to n^5) due to pressure and radiation broadening of lines is much
gentler than expected from existing models which assume a power law background
radiation field. This discrepancy had also been noted earlier. The model line
widths had been overestimated since the turnover in radiation field of
Cassiopeia A at low frequencies had been ignored. In this paper, we show that,
once the spectral turnover is included in the modeling, the slower increase in
line width with quantum number is naturally explained.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA