Complex organic molecules in the Galactic Centre: the N-bearing family

S.Zeng, I. Jiménez-Serra, V. M. Rivilla, S. Martín, J. Martín-Pintado, M. A. Requena-Torres, J. Armijos-Abendaño, D. Riquelme, R. Aladro. 2018. Complex organic molecules in the Galactic Centre: the N-bearing family. Monthly Notices of the Rotal Astronomical Society 478, 3, 2962-2975 DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty1174

We present an unbiased spectral line survey towards the Galactic Centre (GC) quiescent giant molecular cloud, G+0.693 using the GBT and IRAM 30 telescopes. Our study highlights an extremely rich organic inventory of abundant amount of nitrogen (N)-bearing species in a source without signatures of star formation. We report the detection of 17 N-bearing species in this source, of which eight are complex organic molecules. A comparison of the derived abundances relative to H-2 is made across various Galactic and extragalactic environments. We conclude that the unique chemistry in this source is likely to be dominated by low-velocity shocks with X-rays/cosmic rays also playing an important role in the chemistry. Like previous findings obtained for O-bearing molecules, our results for N-bearing species suggest a more efficient hydrogenation of these species on dust grains in G+0.693 than in hot cores in the Galactic disc, as a consequence of the low-dust temperatures coupled with energetic processing by X-ray/cosmic ray radiation in the GC.

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