English

The millimeter IRAM-30m line survey toward IK Tau

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2016-12-21 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We carried out a millimeter wavelength line survey between 79 and 356 GHz with the IRAM-30m telescope to investigate the physical and chemical properties of the molecular envelope of the oxygen-rich AGB star IK Tau. We analysed the molecular lines detected using the population diagram technique to derive rotational temperatures and column densities. Additionally, we conducted a radiative transfer analysis of the SO2_2 lines detected. For the first time in this source we detected rotational lines in the ground vibrational state of HCO+^+, NS, NO, and H2_2CO, as well as several isotopologues of molecules previously identified. We also detected several rotational lines in vibrationally excited states of SiS and SiO isotopologues, and rotational lines of H2_2O (ν2\nu_{\mathrm{2}}=2). We have also increased the number of rotational lines detected of molecules that were previously identified, enabling a detailed study of the molecular abundances and excitation temperatures. IK Tau displays a rich chemistry for an oxygen-rich circumstellar envelope. We highlight the detection of NS and H2_2CO with fractional abundances of f(NS)\sim108^{-8} and f(H2_2CO)\sim[107^{-7}--108^{-8}]. Most of the molecules display rotational temperatures between 15 and 40 K. NaCl and SiS isotopologues display rotational temperatures higher than the average (~65 K). In the case of SO2_2 a warm component with TrotT_{\mathrm{rot}}\sim290 K is also detected. This SO2_2 warm component is probably arising from the inner regions of the envelope (at \sim8RR_{*}) where SO2_2 has a fractional abundance of f(SO2_2)\sim106^{-6}. This result should be considered for future investigation of the main formation channels of this, and other, parent species in the inner winds of O-rich AGB stars, which at present are not well reproduced by current chemistry models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.01904,
  title  = {The millimeter IRAM-30m line survey toward IK Tau},
  author = {L. Velilla Prieto and C. Sánchez Contreras and J. Cernicharo and M. Agúndez and G. Quintana-Lacaci and V. Bujarrabal and J. Alcolea and C. Balança and F. Herpin and K. M. Menten and F. Wyrowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01904},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

47 pages, 26 figures. Accepted for Astronomy and Astrophysics