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First Detections Of PN, PO And PO+ Toward A Shocked Low-mass Starless Core

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.GA

May 2, 2025

Filed under astro-ph.GA, astrochemistry, biochemistry, Galactic cosmic-ray, Interstellar, organic chemistry, origin of life, Phosphorus, prebiotic chemistry

First Detections Of PN, PO And PO+ Toward A Shocked Low-mass Starless Core — Dust temperature (colorscale) and N(H2) column density (contours: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 × 10^{22^{cm^{−2^{) Herschel maps of NGC1333 region in Perseus (Pezzuto et al. 2021). Included are the locations of four starless and prestellar cores, Pers264, Pers317, Pers321 and Pers326 (black circles 38′′ in size) and the locations of the prominent CO outflows in the region, SVS 13A, IRAS 4A, and IRAS 2A, as described in Plunkett et al. 2013 (note: the length of jet arrows are not to scale). — astro-ph.GA}}}}

Phosphorus is a key element that plays an essential role in biological processes important for living organisms on Earth.

The origin and connection of phosphorus-bearing molecules to early Solar system objects and star-forming molecular clouds is therefore of great interest, yet there are limited observations throughout different stages of low-mass (M< a few M_⊙) star formation. Observations from the Yebes 40 m and IRAM 30 m telescopes detect for the first time in the 7mm, 3mm, and 2mm bands multiple transitions of PN and PO, as well as a single transition of PO⁺, toward a low-mass starless core. The presence of PN, PO and PO⁺ is kinematically correlated with bright SiO(1-0) emission.

Our results reveal not only that shocks are the main driver of releasing phosphorus from dust grains and into the gas-phase, but that the emission originates from gas not affiliated with the shock itself, but quiescent gas that has been shocked in the recent past. From radiative transfer calculations, the PO/PN abundance ratio is found to be 3.1+0.4−0.6, consistent with other high-mass and low-mass star-forming regions.

This first detection of PO⁺ toward any low-mass star-forming region reveals a PO⁺/PO ratio of 0.0115+0.0008−0.0009, a factor of ten lower than previously determined from observations of a Galactic Center molecular cloud, suggesting its formation can occur under more standard Galactic cosmic-ray ionization rates.

These results motivate the need for additional observations that can better disentangle the physical mechanisms and chemical drivers of this precursor of prebiotic chemistry.

Samantha Scibelli, Andrés Megías, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, Yancy Shirley, Jennifer Bergner, Judit Ferrer Asensio, Robin T. Garrod, Mélisse Bonfand, Anissa Pokorny-Yadav

Comments: 12 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables; Accepted for publication in ApJL
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2504.17849 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2504.17849v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.17849
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Submission history
From: Samantha Scibelli
[v1] Thu, 24 Apr 2025 18:00:04 UTC (653 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17849
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,

Keith Cowing

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) 🖖🏻

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