Upper limit for the D2H+ ortho-to-para ratio in the prestellar core 16293E (CHESS)

Abstract

The H3+ ion plays a key role in the chemistry of dense interstellar gas clouds where stars and planets are forming. The low temperatures and high extinctions of such clouds make direct observations of H3+ impossible, but lead to large abundances of H2D+ and D2H+, which are very useful probes of the early stages of star and planet formation. The ground-state rotational ortho-D2H+ 111-000 transition at 1476.6 GHz in the prestellar core 16293E has been searched for with the Herschel/HIFI instrument, within the CHESS (Chemical HErschel Surveys of Star forming regions) Key Program. The line has not been detected at the 21 mK km/s level (3 sigma integrated line intensity). We used the ortho-H2D+ 110-111 transition and para-D2H+ 110-101 transition detected in this source to determine an upper limit on the ortho-to-para D2H+ ratio as well as the para-D2H+/ortho-H2D+ ratio from a non-LTE analysis. The comparison between our chemical modeling and the observations suggests that the CO depletion must be high (larger than 100), with a density between 5e5 and 1e6 cm-3. Also the upper limit on the ortho-D2H+ line is consistent with a low gas temperature (~ 11 K) with a ortho-to-para ratio of 6 to 9, i.e. 2 to 3 times higher than the value estimated from the chemical modeling, making it impossible to detect this high frequency transition with the present state of the art receivers.

Accepted in A&A

References in corpus (5)

• A KInetic Database for Astrochemistry (KIDA)
• First detection of triply-deuterated methanol
• The importance of the ortho:para H2 ratio for the deuteration of molecules during pre-protostellar collapse
• Survey of ortho-H2D+(1_{1,0}-1_{1,1}) in dense cloud cores
• Formaldehyde and methanol deuteration in protostars: fossiles from a past fast high density pre-collapse phase

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• Survey of ortho-H${}_2$D${}^{+}$ in high-mass star-forming regions
• Deuterium fractionation and H2D+ evolution in turbulent and magnetized cloud cores
• A timeline for massive star-forming regions via combined observation of o-H${}_2$D${}^{+}$ and N${}_2$D${}^{+}$
• Stratified NH and ND emission in the prestellar core 16293E in L1689N
• Star Formation and Feedback: A Molecular Outflow-Prestellar Core Interaction in L1689N
• Fast deuterium fractionation in magnetized and turbulent filaments
• The molecular environment of the solar-type protostar IRAS 16293-2422
• Deuterium Chemodynamics of Massive Pre-Stellar Cores
• Chemical analysis of prestellar cores in Ophiuchus yields short timescales and rapid collapse