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Published October 3, 2013 | public
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CH_2D^+, the Search for the Holy Grail

Roueff, Evelyne ORCID icon
Gerin, Maryvonne
Lis, Dariusz C. ORCID icon
Wootten, Alwyn
Marcelino, Nuria
Cernicharo, Jose
Tercero, Belen
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Abstract

CH_2D^+, the singly deuterated counterpart of CH_3^+, offers an alternative way to mediate formation of deuterated species at temperatures of several tens of Kelvin, as compared to the release of deuterated species from grains. We report a longstanding observational search for this molecular ion, whose rotational spectroscopy is not yet completely secure. We summarize the main spectroscopic properties of this molecule and discuss the chemical network leading to the formation of CH_2D^+, with explicit account of the ortho/para forms of H_2, H_3^+, and CH_3^+. Astrochemical models support the presence of this molecular ion in moderately warm environments at a marginal level.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Chemical Society. Received: January 4, 2013. Revised: April 29, 2013. Publication Date (Web): April 29, 2013. This work has greatly benefited from different aspects of Oka's contributions in various areas. This research is partly based upon work at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (AST-0838261) and also on observations obtained with the IRAM-30 m telescope. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain). Part of the work has been done when D.C.L. was visiting LERMA as an invited professor at the Physics Department of Ecole Normale Superieure. J.C. thanks Spanish MINECO for support under grants CSD2009-00038 and AYA2009-07304. The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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