Interstellar Isomers: The Importance of Bonding Energy Differences

Abstract

We present strong detections of methyl cyanide, vinyl cyanide, ethyl cyanide and cyanodiacetylene molecules with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) toward the Sgr B2(N) molecular cloud. Attempts to detect the corresponding isocyanide isomers were only successful in the case of methyl isocyanide for its J(K)=1(0)-0(0) transition, which is the first interstellar report of this line. To determine the spatial distribution of methyl isocyanide, we used archival Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) array data for the J(K)=4(K)-3(K) (K=0-3) transitions but no emission was detected. From ab initio calculations, the bonding energy difference between the cyanide and isocyanide molecules is >8500 cm^-1 (>12,000 K). That we detect methyl isocyanide emission with a single antenna (Gaussian beamsize(Omega_B)=1723 arcsec^2) but not with an interferometer (Omega_B=192 arcsec^2), strongly suggests that methyl isocyanide has a widespread spatial distribution toward the Sgr B2(N) region. Thus, large-scale, non-thermal processes in the surrounding medium may account for the conversion of methyl cyanide to methyl isocyanide while the LMH hot core, which is dominated by thermal processes, does not produce a significant amount of methyl isocyanide. Ice analog experiments by other investigators have shown that radiation bombardment of methyl cyanide can produce methyl isocyanide, thus supporting our observations. We conclude that isomers separated by such large bonding energy differences are distributed in different interstellar environments, making the evaluation of column density ratios between such isomers irrelevant unless it can be independently shown that these species are co-spatial.