Detection of Interstellar E-1-cyano-1,3-butadiene in GOTHAM Observations of TMC-1

Abstract

We report the detection of the lowest-energy conformer of E -1-cyano-1,3-butadiene ( E -1- ${{\rm{C}}}_{4}{{\rm{H}}}_{5}\mathrm{CN}$ ), a linear isomer of pyridine, using the fourth data reduction of the GBT Observations of TMC-1: Hunting for Aromatic Molecules (GOTHAM) deep spectral survey toward TMC-1 with the 100 m Green Bank Telescope. We perform velocity stacking and matched-filter analyses using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations and find evidence for the presence of this molecule at the 5.1 σ level. We derive a total column density of ${3.8}_{-0.9}^{+1.0}\times {10}^{10}$ cm ^−2 , which is predominantly found toward two of the four velocity components we observe toward TMC-1. We use this molecule as a proxy for constraining the gas-phase abundance of the apolar hydrocarbon 1,3-butadiene. Based on the three-phase astrochemical modeling code NAUTILUS and an expanded chemical network, our model underestimates the abundance of cyano-1,3-butadiene by a factor of 19, with a peak column density of 2.34 × 10 ^10 cm ^−2 for 1,3-butadiene. Compared to the modeling results obtained in previous GOTHAM analyses, the abundance of 1,3-butadiene is increased by about two orders of magnitude. Despite this increase, the modeled abundances of aromatic species do not appear to change and remain underestimated by one to four orders of magnitude. Meanwhile, the abundances of the five-membered ring molecules increase proportionally with 1,3-butadiene by two orders of magnitude. We discuss the implications for bottom-up formation routes to aromatic and polycyclic aromatic molecules.

Keywords

• Astrochemistry
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• Chemical abundances
• Dark interstellar clouds
• Interstellar molecules