Investigation of the rotational spectrum of CH₃ ¹⁷OH and its tentative detection toward Sagittarius B2(N)

Abstract

Methanol is an abundant and widespread molecule in the interstellar medium. The column density of its 18O isotopolog, CH$_3$18OH, is in some star-forming regions so high that the search for CH$_3$17OH is promising. But only very few transition frequencies of CH$_3$17OH with a microwave accuracy have been published prior to our investigation. We want to extend the very limited rotational line list of CH$_3$17OH to be able to search for this isotopolog in the interstellar medium. We recorded the rotational spectrum of CH$_3$17OH between 38 and 1095 GHz employing a methanol sample enriched in 17O to 20<!PCT!>. A torsion-rotation Hamiltonian model based on the rho-axis method was employed to fit the data, as in our previous studies. We searched for rotational transitions of CH$_3$17OH in the imaging spectral line survey ReMoCA obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward the high-mass star-forming region Sgr B2(N). The observed spectra were modeled under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). The assignments cover $0 J 45$, $K_a 16$, and mainly the $ t = 0$ and 1 torsional states. The Hamiltonian model describes our data well. The model was applied to derive a line list for radio-astronomical observations. We report a tentative detection of CH$_3$17OH along with secure detections of the more abundant isotopologs of methanol toward Sgr B2(N2b). The derived column densities yield isotopic ratios 12C/13C = 25, 16O/18O = 240, and 18O/17O = 3.3, which are consistent with values found earlier for other molecules in Sgr B2. The agreement between the 18O/17O isotopic ratio that we obtained for methanol and the 18O/17O ratios reported in the past for other molecules in Sgr B2(N) strongly supports our tentative interstellar identification of CH$_3$17OH. The accuracy of the derived line list is sufficient for further radio astronomical searches for this methanol isotopolog toward other star-forming regions.