Astrochemistry

Constraints Of The Formation And Abundances Of Methyl Carbamate, A Glycine Isomer, In Hot Corinos

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.GA
June 29, 2020
Filed under
Constraints Of The Formation And Abundances Of Methyl Carbamate, A Glycine Isomer, In Hot Corinos
Methyl Carbamate
astro-ph.GA

Methyl carbamate CH3OC(O)NH2 is an isomer of glycine. Quantum chemical analyses show that methyl carbamate is more stable isomer than glycine. Because of this, there could be a higher chance for methyl carbamte to exist in the interstellar medium as compared to glycine.

Despite immense searches, till now glycine has not been detected in the ISM, therefore it is worthwhile to search its isomer methyl carbamate. In this paper, we present the constraints of methyl carbamate formation under the interstellar conditions. Large complex organic molecules are favorably produced in hot-corino environments of low mass protostars. We for the first time carried out astrochemical modeling focusing on the formation of methyl carbamate in physical conditions similar to hot-corino objects.

Consequently, we examined ALMA archival data for existing spectral line observations toward hot corinos NGC1333 IRAS 4A2 and IRAS 16293B. Within the common spectral range towards these sources, we found three features are possibly related to the spectral transitions of methyl carbamate and consequently estimate the upper limit of column densities. Results of chemical modeling are consistent with the observational upper limit of estimated column density/abundance toward the sources. This may hint the validation of the proposed formation mechanism. Future observations using telescope like ngVLA may confirm the presence of MC toward the hot corinos.

Dipen Sahu, Sheng-Yuan Liu, Ankan Das, Prasanta Gorai, Valentine Wakelam
Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJ
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2006.15629 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2006.15629v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
Submission history
From: Dipen Sahu
[v1] Sun, 28 Jun 2020 15:05:40 UTC (562 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.15629
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻