V. M. Rivilla, J. G. De La Concepción, I. Jiménez-Serra, J. Martín-Pintado, L. Colzi, B. Tercero, A. Megías, Á. López-Gallifa, A. Martínez-Henares, S. Massalkhi, S. Martín, S. Zeng, P. De Vicente, F. Rico-Villas, M. A. Requena-Torres, and G. Cosentino
announced
Ionize Hard: Interstellar PO<sup>+</sup> Detection
Front. Astron. Space Sci. 9, Art. No. 829288 (2022).
The J = 1 – 0 and 2 – 1 transitions of this closed shell cation near 47.0 and 94.0 GHz were identified in emission in the course of a molecular line survey of the Galactic center cold molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027 carried out with the Yebes 40 m and IRAM 30 m radio telescopes. An excitation temperature of 4.5 K was taken from PN; this value was also used for the neutral PO radical. The PO+ to PO ratio was 0.12 ± 0.03, much higher than the preferred SO+ to SO ratio of 0.0045 ± 0.0003 or the NO+ to NO ratio of 0.00245 ± 0.00005.
Contributor(s): H. S. P. Müller; 05, 2022