Low-$J$ transitions in $\tilde{A}^2Π(0,0,0)-\tilde{X}^2Σ^+(0,0,0)$ band of buffer-gas-cooled CaOH

Abstract

Calcium monohydroxide radical (CaOH) is receiving an increasing amount of attention from the astrophysics community as it is expected to be present in the atmospheres of hot rocky super-Earth exoplanets as well as interstellar and circumstellar environments. Here, we report the high-resolution laboratory absorption spectroscopy on low-J transitions in Ã2 Π(0, 0, 0) − X2 Σ + (0, 0, 0) band of buffer-gas-cooled CaOH. In total, 40 transitions out of the low-J states were assigned, including 27 transitions which have not been reported in previous literature. The determined rotational constants for both ground and excited states are in excellent agreement with previous literature, and the measurement uncertainty for the absolute transition frequencies was improved by more than a factor of three. This will aid future interstellar, circumstellar, and atmospheric identifications of CaOH. The buffer-gas-cooling method employed here is a particularly powerful method to probe low-J transitions and is easily applicable to other astrophysical molecules. 1. INTRODUCTION Calcium monohydroxide molecules ( 40 Ca 16 O 1 H) now have a special standing because of their expected presence in the atmospheres of hot rocky super-Earth exoplanets (Bernath (2009); Rajpurohit, A. S. et al. (2013); Tennyson & Yurchenko ( 2017)). Determining accurate spectroscopic parameters and transition frequencies on relatively simple molecules present in this environment are necessary for exploration of hot rocky super-Earths. Because of highly abundant Ca atoms, CaOH could also be found in interstellar and circumstellar spaces, where the temperature is sometimes in the 10s of kelvin regime. In fact, CaOH has been detected in cool stellar atmospheres at low spectral resolution (Rajpurohit, A. S. et al. (2016)). CaOH is therefore an excellent spectroscopic target species.