ALMA Observations of the Spatial Distribution of three C2H4O2 Isomers towards Sgr B2(N)
The C2H4O2 isomers have been previously investigated primarily via disparate sets of observations involving single dish and array measurements.
The only attempt at using a uniform set of observations was performed with the IRAM 30 m observation in 2013 (Belloche et al. 2013). In this study, we present an intensive and rigorous spectral and morphological analysis of the C2H4O2 isomers towards Sgr B2(N) with interferometers, ALMA Band 3 observations. We propose a quantitative selection method, which automates the determination of the most uncontaminated transitions and allows us to report the discovery of previously undetected transitions of the three isomers. With the least contaminated transitions, the high spatial-resolution millimeter maps of the C2H4O2 isomers reveal that HCOOCH3 and CH2OHCHO each display two different velocity components, while only one velocity component of CH3COOH is resolved.
Moreover, the distribution of HCOOCH3 is extended and offset from the continuum emission, unlike CH2OHCHO and CH3COOH, for which the low-velocity component is found to be compact and concentrated toward the continuum emission peak of Sgr B2(N). The distinct morphologies of these C2H4O2 isomeric species indicate that HCOOCH3 have significant differences in chemical processes than CH2OHCHO and CH3COOH, which display similar spatial distributions.
Ci Xue (1), Anthony J. Remijan (2), Andrew M. Burkhardt (1), Eric Herbst (1) ((1) University of Virginia, (2) National Radio Astronomy Observatory)
(Submitted on 17 Dec 2018)
Comments: 60 pages, 16 figures
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:1812.07091 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:1812.07091v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
Submission history
From: Ci Xue
[v1] Mon, 17 Dec 2018 23:13:52 UTC (6,910 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07091
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry
