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Register a new userDiscovery of interstellar mercapto radicals (SH) with the GREAT instrument on SOFIA
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D. A. Neufeld
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We report the first detection of interstellar mercapto radicals, obtained along the sight-line to the submillimeter continuum source W49N. We have used the GREAT instrument on SOFIA to observe the 1383 GHz Doublet Pi 3/2 J = 5/2 - 3/2 lambda doublet in the upper sideband of the L1 receiver. The resultant spectrum reveals SH absorption in material local to W49N, as well as in foreground gas, unassociated with W49N, that is located along the sight-line. For the foreground material at velocities in the range 37 - 44 km/s with respect to the local standard of rest, we infer a total SH column density ~ 2.6 E+12 cm-2, corresponding to an abundance of ~ 7 E-9 relative to H2, and yielding an SH/H2S abundance ratio ~ 0.13. The observed SH/H2S abundance ratio is much smaller than that predicted by standard models for the production of SH and H2S in turbulent dissipation regions and shocks, and suggests that the endothermic neutral-neutral reaction SH + H2 -> H2S + H must be enhanced along with the ion-neutral reactions believed to produce CH+ and SH+ in diffuse molecular clouds.
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We report the discovery of water maser emission at frequencies above 1 THz. Using the GREAT instrument on SOFIA, we have detected emission in the 1.296411 THz 8(27)-7(34) transition of water toward three oxygen-rich evolved stars: W Hya, U Her, and VY CMa. An upper limit on the 1.296 THz line flux was obtained toward R Aql. Near-simultaneous observations of the 22.23508 GHz 6(16)-5(23) water maser transition were carried out towards all four sources using the Effelsberg 100m telescope. The measured line fluxes imply 22 GHz / 1.296 THz photon luminosity ratios of 0.012, 0.12, and 0.83 respectively for W Hya, U Her, and VY CMa, values that confirm the 22 GHz maser transition to be unsaturated in W Hya and U Her. We also detected the 1.884888 THz 8(45)-7(53) transition toward W Hya and VY CMa, and the 1.278266 THz 7(43)-6(52) transition toward VY CMa. Like the 22 GHz maser transition, all three of the THz emission lines detected here originate from the ortho-H2O spin isomer. Based upon a model for the circumstellar envelope of W Hya, we estimate that stimulated emission is responsible for ~ 85% of the observed 1.296 THz line emission, and thus that this transition may be properly described as a terahertz-frequency maser. In the case of the 1.885 THz transition, by contrast, our W Hya model indicates that the observed emission is dominated by spontaneous radiative decay, even though a population inversion exists.
We have revisited the chemistry of chlorine-bearing species in the diffuse interstellar medium with new observations of the HCl$^+$ molecular ion and new astrochemical models. Using the GREAT instrument on board SOFIA, we observed the $^2Pi_{3/2}, J = 5/2 - 3/2$ transition of HCl$^+$ near 1444 GHz toward the bright THz continuum source W49N. We detected absorption by diffuse foreground gas unassociated with the background source, and were able to thereby measure the distribution of HCl$^+$ along the sight-line. We interpreted the observational data using an updated version of an astrochemical model used previously in a theoretical study of Cl-bearing interstellar molecules. The abundance of HCl$^+$ was found to be almost constant relative to the related H$_2$Cl$^+$ ion, but the observed $n({rm H_2Cl^+})/n({rm HCl^+})$ abundance ratio exceeds the predictions of our astrochemical model by an order-of-magnitude. This discrepancy suggests that the rate of the primary destruction process for ${rm H_2Cl^+}$, dissociative recombination, has been significantly overestimated. For HCl$^+$, the model predictions can provide a satisfactory fit to the observed column densities along the W49N sight-line while simultaneously accounting for the ${rm OH^+}$ and ${rm H_2O^+}$ column densities.
The [CII] 158 um fine structure line is one of the dominant cooling lines in the interstellar medium (ISM) and is an important tracer of star formation. Recent velocity-resolved studies with Herschel/HIFI and SOFIA/GREAT showed that the [CII] line can constrain the properties of the ISM phases in star-forming regions. The [CII] line as a tracer of star formation is particularly important in low-metallicity environments where CO emission is weak because of the presence of large amounts of CO-dark gas. The nearby irregular dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 offers an excellent opportunity to study an actively star-forming ISM at low metallicity. We analyzed the spectrally resolved [CII] line profiles in three distinct regions at different evolutionary stages of NGC 4214 with respect to ancillary HI and CO data in order to study the origin of the [CII] line. We used SOFIA/GREAT [CII] 158 um observations, HI data from THINGS, and CO(2-1) data from HERACLES to decompose the spectrally resolved [CII] line profiles into components associated with neutral atomic and molecular gas. We use this decomposition to infer gas masses traced by [CII] under different ISM conditions. Averaged over all regions, we associate about 46% of the [CII] emission with the HI emission. However, we can assign only around 9% of the total [CII] emission to the cold neutral medium (CNM). We found that about 79% of the total molecular hydrogen mass is not traced by CO emission. On average, the fraction of CO-dark gas dominates the molecular gas mass budget. The fraction seems to depend on the evolutionary stage of the regions: it is highest in the region covering a super star cluster in NGC 4214, while it is lower in a more compact, more metal-rich region.
Silicon monosulfide is an important silicon bearing molecule detected in circumstellar envelopes and star forming regions. Its formation and destruction routes are not well understood, partially due to the lack of a detailed knowledge on the involved reactions and their rate coefficients. In this work we have calculated and modeled the potential energy surface (PES) of the HSiS system employing highly accurate multireference electronic structure methods. After obtaining an accurate analytic representation of the PES, which includes long-range energy terms in a realistic way via the DMBE method, we have calculated rate coefficients for the Si+SH$rightarrow$SiS+H reaction over the temperature range of 25-1000K. This reaction is predicted to be fast, with a rate coefficient of $sim 1times 10^{-10}rm cm^3, s^{-1}$ at 200K, which substantially increases for lower temperatures (the temperature dependence can be described by a modified Arrhenius equation with $alpha=0.770times 10^{-10}rm cm^3,s^{-1}$, $beta=-0.756$ and $gamma=9.873, rm K$). An astrochemical gas-grain model of a shock region similar to L1157-B1 shows that the inclusion of the Si+SH reaction increases the SiS gas-phase abundance relative to ce{H2} from $5times 10^{-10}$ to $1.4times 10^{-8}$, which perfectly matches the observed abundance of $sim 2times 10^{-8}$.
The rate constants for the formation, destruction, and collisional excitation of SH$^+$ are calculated from quantum mechanical approaches using two new SH$_2^+$ potential energy surfaces (PESs) of $^4A$ and $^2A$ electronic symmetry. The PESs were developed to describe all adiabatic states correlating to the SH$^+$ ($^3Sigma^-$) + H($^2S$) channel. The formation of SH$^+$ through the S$^+$ + H$_2$ reaction is endothermic by $approx$ 9860 K, and requires at least two vibrational quanta on the H$_2$ molecule to yield significant reactivity. Quasi-classical calculations of the total formation rate constant for H$_2$($v=2$) are in very good agreement with the quantum results above 100K. Further quasi-classical calculations are then performed for $v=3$, 4, and 5 to cover all vibrationally excited H$_2$ levels significantly populated in dense photodissociation regions (PDR). The new calculated formation and destruction rate constants are two to six times larger than the previous ones and have been introduced in the Meudon PDR code to simulate the physical and illuminating conditions in the Orion bar prototypical PDR. New astrochemical models based on the new molecular data produce four times larger SH$^+$ column densities, in agreement with those inferred from recent ALMA observations of the Orion bar.
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