Organic Acid Chemistry in ISM: Detection of Formic Acid and its Prebiotic Chemistry in Hot Core G358.93$-$0.03 MM1

Abstract

In the interstellar medium, formic acid (HCOOH) plays a significant role in the synthesis of the simplest amino acid, glycine (NH${}_2$CH${}_2$COOH). The presence of HCOOH suggests that oxygen-bearing molecules may be directly involved in the chemical and physical evolution of star formation regions, particularly in hot molecular cores. This paper presents the first detection of the rotational emission lines of the $trans$-conformer of HCOOH toward the hot molecular core G358.93$-$0.03 MM1, located in the massive star formation region G358.93$-$0.03. This study employed high-resolution observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Band 7. The column density and excitation temperature of $t$-HCOOH are determined as $(8.13\pm 0.72)\times 10^{15}$ cm${}^{-2}$ and $120\pm 15$ K, respectively. The fractional abundance of $t$-HCOOH relative to H${}_2$ is $(2.62\pm 0.29)\times 10^{-9}$. The column density ratios of $t$-HCOOH/CH${}_3$OH and $t$-HCOOH/H${}_2$CO are $(1.56\pm 0.12)\times 10^{-2}$ and $(1.16\pm 0.12)$, respectively. We computed a three-phase warm-up chemical model of HCOOH using the gas-grain chemical code UCLCHEM. We found that the observed and modelled abundances of HCOOH are almost identical, within a factor of 0.89. Based on chemical modelling, we showed that HCOOH may be formed through the reaction between HCO and OH on the grain surface, which is further released in the gas-phase.

Published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA)