Tentative Detection of the Nitrosylium Ion in Space

Abstract

We report the tentative detection in space of the nitrosylium ion, NO + . The observations were performed towards the cold dense core Barnard 1-b. The identification of the NO + J=2-1 line is supported by new laboratory measurements of NO + rotational lines up to the J=8-7 transition (953207.189 MHz), which leads to an improved set of molecular constants: B 0 = 59597.1379(62) MHz, D 0 = 169.428(65) kHz, and eQq 0 (N) = −6.72(15) MHz. The profile of the feature assigned to NO + exhibits two velocity components at 6.5 and 7.5 km s −1 , with column densities of 1.5 × 10 12 and 6.5 × 10 11 cm −2 , respectively. New observations of NO and HNO, also reported here, allow to estimate the following abundance ratios: X(NO)/X(NO + )≃ 511, and

Laboratory rotational ground state transitions of NH3D+and CF+

“…This value is well in the range of observed v LSR in single dish observations of Barnard B1-b (e.g. Lis et al 2006;Daniel et al 2013;Cernicharo et al 2014), but falls somewhat between the systemic velocities of 6.3 km s −1 and 7.2 km s −1 associated with the two embedded B1-bS and B1-bN cores derived from high-spatial resolution observations of, for example N 2 H + , by Huang & Hirano (2013). Nevertheless, from a purely spectroscopic view our laboratory measurements support the assignment of the astronomical lines observed in B1-bS and Orion IRc2 to NH 3 D + .…”

Infrared spectra and band strengths of amorphous and crystalline N2O

“…6 An identification also has been made with radiowave methods 7 from the source Sgr B2, and recently Cernicharo et al reported NO + toward the object Barnard 1-b. 8 The only other extraterrestrial nitrogen-oxygen molecule reported is N 2 O, nitrous oxide, which was found by Ziurys et al in the interstellar source Sgr B2(M), 9 and for which Jamieson et al explored low-temperature synthetic pathways. 10 a) Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.…”

Far-infrared spectroscopy of heavy protonated noble gas species using synchrotron radiation

“…Indeed, the study of ionic molecules with an FTIR instrument is still challenging. As an example, we were unable to detect NO + at SOLEIL while pure rotation lines within the ground and vibrationnally excited states were successfully observed using submillimeter techniques [46]. An interesting perspective to improve the S/N of absorption spectra recorded with our rapid scan interferometer of the AILES beamline would be to use modulation concentration or velocity modulation techniques.…”