English

Are fulleranes responsible for the 21 micron feature?

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2020-06-15 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Recent detections of C60_{60}, C70_{70}, and C60+_{60}^+ in space induced extensive studies of fullerene derivatives in circumstellar environments. As the promising fullerene sources, protoplanetary nebulae (PPNe) show a number of unidentified bands in their infrared spectra, among which a small sample exhibits an enigmatic feature at 21\sim21\,μ\mum. Hydrogenation of fullerenes can produce fulleranes emitting new infrared bands. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of fulleranes (C60_{60}Hm_m) as the carrier of the 21\,μ\mum feature in terms of theoretical vibrational spectra of fulleranes. The evidences favoring and disfavoring the fullerane hypothesis are presented. We made an initial guess for the hydrogen coverage of C60_{60}Hm_m that may contribute to the 21\,μ\mum feature.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.07053,
  title  = {Are fulleranes responsible for the 21 micron feature?},
  author = {Yong Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.07053},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

15 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:16:10.330Z