While recent studies of the solar-mass protostar IRAS16293-2422 have focused on its inner arcsecond, the wealth of Herschel/HIFI data has shown that the structure of the outer envelope and of the transition region to the more diffuse ISM is not clear
ly constrained. We use rotational ground-state transitions of CH (methylidyne), as a tracer of the lower-density envelope. Assuming LTE, we perform a $chi^2$ minimization of the high spectral resolution HIFI observations of the CH transitions at ~532 and ~536 GHz in order to derive column densities in the envelope and in the foreground cloud. We obtain column densities of (7.7$pm$0.2)$times10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$ and (1.5$pm$0.3)$times10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$, respectively. The chemical modeling predicts column densities of (0.5-2)$times10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$ in the envelope (depending on the cosmic-ray ionization rate), and 5$times10^{11}$ to 2.5$times10^{14}$ cm$^{-2}$ in the foreground cloud (depending on time). Both observed abundances are reproduced by the model at a satisfactory level. The constraints set by these observations on the physical conditions in the foreground cloud are however weak. Furthermore, the CH abundance in the envelope is strongly affected by the rate coefficient of the reaction H+CH$rightarrow$C+H$_2$ ; further investigation of its value at low temperature would be necessary to facilitate the comparison between the model and the observations.
High deuterium fractionation is observed in various types of environment such as prestellar cores, hot cores and hot corinos. It has proven to be an efficient probe to study the physical and chemical conditions of these environments. The study of the
deuteration of different molecules helps us to understand their formation. This is especially interesting for complex molecules such as methanol and bigger molecules for which it may allow to differentiate between gas-phase and solid-state formation pathways. Methanol exhibits a high deuterium fractionation in hot corinos. Since CH3OH is thought to be a precursor of methyl formate we expect that deuterated methyl formate is produced in such environments. We have searched for the singly-deuterated isotopologue of methyl formate, DCOOCH3, in IRAS 16293-2422, a hot corino well-known for its high degree of methanol deuteration. We have used the IRAM/JCMT unbiased spectral survey of IRAS 16293-2422 which allows us to search for the DCOOCH3 rotational transitions within the survey spectral range (80-280 GHz, 328-366 GHz). The expected emission of deuterated methyl formate is modelled at LTE and compared with the observations.} We have tentatively detected DCOOCH3 in the protostar IRAS 16293-2422. We assign eight lines detected in the IRAM survey to DCOOCH3. Three of these lines are affected by blending problems and one line is affected by calibration uncertainties, nevertheless the LTE emission model is compatible with the observations. A simple LTE modelling of the two cores in IRAS 16293-2422, based on a previous interferometric study of HCOOCH3, allows us to estimate the amount of DCOOCH3 in IRAS 16293-2422. Adopting an excitation temperature of 100 K and a source size of 2arcsec and 1farcs5 for the A and B cores, respectively, we find that N(A,DCOOCH3) = N(B,DCOOCH3) ~ 6.10^14 /cm2. The derived deuterium fractionation is ~ 15%, consistent with values for other deuterated species in this source and much greater than that expected from the deuterium cosmic abundance. DCOOCH3, if its tentative detection is confirmed, should now be considered in theoretical models that study complex molecule formation and their deuteration mechanisms. Experimental work is also needed to investigate the different chemical routes leading to the formation of deuterated methyl formate.
