The Missing Link of Sulfur Chemistry in TMC-1: The Detection of c-C3H2S from the GOTHAM Survey

We present the spectroscopic characterization of cyclopropenethione (c-C3H2S) in the laboratory and detect it in space using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) Observations of TMC-1: Hunting Aromatic Molecules (GOTHAM) survey.
The detection of this molecule – the missing link in understanding the C3H2S isomeric family in TMC-1 – completes the detection of all 3 low-energy isomers of C3H2S as both CH2CCS and HCCCHS have been previously detected in this source.
The total column density of this molecule (N_T of 5.72+2.65/-1.61×10^10 cm^-2 at an excitation temperature of 4.7+1.3/-1.1 K) is smaller than both CH2CCS and HCCCHS and follows nicely the relative dipole principle (RDP), a kinetic rule-of-thumb for predicting isomer abundances which suggests that, all other chemistry among a family of isomers being the same, the member with the smallest dipole should be the most abundant.
The RDP now holds for the astronomical abundance ratios of both the S-bearing and O-bearing counterparts observed in TMC-1; however, CH2CCO continues to elude detection in any astronomical source.
Anthony J. Remijan, P. Bryan Changala, Ci Xue, Elsa Q.H. Yuan, Miya Duffy, Haley N. Scolati, Christopher N. Shingledecker, Thomas H. Speak, Ilsa R. Cooke, Ryan Loomis, Andrew M. Burkhardt, Zachary T.P. Fried, Gabi Wenzel, Andrew Lipnicky, Michael C. McCarthy, Brett A. McGuire
Comments: 10 Pages, 7 Figures, 11 Tables
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2501.06343 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2501.06343v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2501.06343
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Submission history
From: Anthony Remijan
[v1] Fri, 10 Jan 2025 20:57:23 UTC (2,114 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06343
Astrobiology,