English

Interstellar Detection of 2-Cyanocyclopentadiene, C$_5$H$_5$CN, a Second Five-Membered Ring Toward TMC-1

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-04-28 v1

Abstract

Using radio observations with the Green Bank Telescope, evidence has now been found for a second five-membered ring in the dense cloud Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 (TMC-1). Based on additional observations of an ongoing, large-scale, high-sensitivity spectral line survey (GOTHAM) at centimeter wavelengths toward this source, we have used a combination of spectral stacking, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), and matched filtering techniques to detect 2-cyanocyclopentadiene, a low-lying isomer of 1-cyanocyclopentadiene, which was recently discovered there by the same methods. The new observational data also yields a considerably improved detection significance for the more stable isomer and evidence for several individual transitions between 23 - 32 GHz. Through our MCMC analysis, we derive total column densities of 8.3×10118.3\times10^{11} and 1.9×10111.9\times10^{11} cm2^{-2} for 1- and 2-cyanocyclopentadiene respectively, corresponding to a ratio of 4.4(6) favoring the former. The derived abundance ratios point towards a common formation pathway - most likely being cyanation of cyclopentadiene by analogy to benzonitrile.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.09595,
  title  = {Interstellar Detection of 2-Cyanocyclopentadiene, C$_5$H$_5$CN, a Second Five-Membered Ring Toward TMC-1},
  author = {Kin Long Kelvin Lee and P. Bryan Changala and Ryan A. Loomis and Andrew M. Burkhardt and Ci Xue and Martin A. Cordiner and Steven B. Charnley and Michael C. McCarthy and Brett A. McGuire},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.09595},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures and 1 table in the main text. 2 tables and 2 figures in the Appendix. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Supplementary data available in the DataVerse entry provided in text