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Published November 13, 2012 | public
Journal Article Metadata-only

Hydride spectroscopy of the diffuse interstellar medium: new clues on the gas fraction in molecular form and cosmic ray ionization rate in relation to H₃⁺

Gerin, M.
Levrier, F.
Falgarone, E.
Godard, B.
Hennebelle, P.
Le Petit, F.
De Luca, M.
Neufeld, D. ORCID icon
Sonnentrucker, P.
Goldsmith, P. ORCID icon
Flagey, N. ORCID icon
Lis, D. C. ORCID icon
Persson, C. M.
Black, J. H.
Goicoechea, J. R.
Menten, K. M. ORCID icon

Abstract

The Herschel-guaranteed time key programme PRobing InterStellar Molecules with Absorption line Studies (PRISMAS) is providing a survey of the interstellar hydrides containing the elements C, O, N, F and Cl. As the building blocks of interstellar molecules, hydrides provide key information on their formation pathways. They can also be used as tracers of important physical and chemical properties of the interstellar gas that are difficult to measure otherwise. This paper presents an analysis of two sight-lines investigated by the PRISMAS project, towards the star-forming regions W49N and W51. By combining the information extracted from the detected spectral lines, we present an analysis of the physical properties of the diffuse interstellar gas, including the electron abundance, the fraction of gas in molecular form, and constraints on the cosmic ray ionization rate and the gas density.

Additional Information

© 2012 The Royal Society. Published online 13/11/2012; Published in print 13/11/2012. Theo Murphy Meeting Issue 'Chemistry, astronomy and physics of H₃⁺' organized and edited by Takeshi Oka. HIFI has been designed and built by a consortium of institutes and university departments from across Europe, Canada and the USA under the leadership of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Groningen, The Netherlands, and with major contributions from Germany, France and the USA. Consortium members are: Canada: CSA, U. Waterloo. France: CESR, LAB, LERMA, IRAM. Germany: KOSMA, MPIfR, MPS. Ireland: NUI Maynooth. Italy: ASI, IFSI-INAF, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri-INAF. The Netherlands: SRON, TUD. Poland: CAMK, CBK. Spain: Observatorio Astronmico Nacional (IGN), Centro de Astrobiologa (CSIC-INTA). Sweden: Chalmers University of Technology - MC2, RSS & GARD; Onsala Space Observatory; Swedish National Space Board, Stockholm University-Stockholm Observatory. Switzerland: ETH Zurich, FHNW. USA: Caltech, JPL, NHSC. M.G., F.L., E.F., P.H. and M.D.L. acknowledge support from CNES and from the CNRS/INSU program PCMI. The chemical modelling is partly funded by grant no. ANR-09-BLAN-0231-01 from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche as part of the SCHISM project.

Additional details

Identifiers Funding Dates
Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023