Far-Infrared Synchrotron Spectroscopy of a Potentially Important Interstellar Isotopologue of Vinyl Alcohol: CH₂CHOD

Abstract

The far-infrared spectrum (100–500 cm–1) of a d 1 isotopologue of the astrophysically important molecule, vinyl alcohol, is reported. We observed several low energy (OD) torsional bands: the fundamental and first two hot bands of the syn rotamer and the fundamental and first hot band of the (higher energy) anti rotamer. While the bands corresponding to the anti rotamer are somewhat obscured by rotational lines of water (making a full spectroscopic analysis unfeasible at this stage), the syn-vinyl alcohol bands are not, and a global fit was performed that included 4404 distinct infrared lines assigned in this work, in addition to 59 previously reported microwave lines. This simultaneous analysis of the torsional fundamental, torsional hot band, and pure rotational band of syn-vinyl alcohol allowed for determination of spectroscopic parameters in the first two torsionally excited states and for refinement of them in the ground state. These parameters should be useful in searches for both cold and warm CH2CHOD in interstellar molecular clouds.

Characterization of the Coriolis Coupled Far-Infrared Bands of syn-Vinyl Alcohol

“…VA was prepared by pyrolysis of 2-chloroethanol at ∼950 °C, viz., . At this temperature, almost complete pyrolysis is achieved, and any remnant precursor lines can be readily identified based on previous analyses. , The gaseous products were flowed through the room temperature White cell that was maintained at a low pressure by adjusting a throttle valve situated in-between the cell and rotary vane pump.…”

New prebiotic molecules in the interstellar medium from the reaction between vinyl alcohol and CN radicals: unsupervised reaction mechanism discovery, accurate electronic structure calculations and kinetic simulations

“…8 Over the years much work has been devoted to the spectroscopic characterization of VyA and its presence in various astronomical objects has been researched. 9,10 Possible reaction mechanisms have also been hypothesized using experimental and computational approaches to account for the relative abundances of the syn and anti isomers. [11][12][13] Furthermore, enols and aldehydes are considered key tracers of a non-equilibrium chemistry driven by cosmic rays leading to complex organic molecules.…”