High Deuteration of Methanol in L1544

Isotopic fractionation is a very powerful tool to follow the evolution of material from one stage to the next in the star-formation process. Prestellar cores exhibit some of the highest levels of deuteration because their physical conditions (T ≤ 10 K and n(H₂) ≥ 10⁵ cm^-3) greatly favor deuteration processes. Deuteration maps are a measure of the effectiveness of the deuteration across the core, and they are useful to study both the deuteration and the formation mechanism (either in the gas-phase or on grain surfaces) of the main species. Methanol is the simplest complex organic molecule (COM) that is O-bearing and detected in the interstellar medium (ISM). It represents the beginning of molecular complexity in star-forming regions; thus, a complete understanding of its formation and deuteration is a necessary step to understand the development of further chemical complexity. In this paper, we use single-dish observations with the IRAM 30 m telescope and state-of-the-art chemical models to investigate the deuteration of methanol toward the prototypical prestellar core L1544. We also compare the results of the chemical models with previous observations of deuterated methanol toward the presttellar cores HMM1 and L694-2. The spectra extracted from the CHD₂OH map show that the emission is concentrated in the center and toward the northwest of the core. Using deep observations toward the dust and the methanol peaks of the core, we derive a very large deuterium fraction for methanol (∼20%) toward both peaks. The comparison of our observational results with chemical models has highlighted the importance of H-abstraction processes in the formation and deuteration of methanol. Deep observations combined with state-of-the-art chemical models are of fundamental importance in understanding the development of molecular complexity in the ISM. Our analysis also shows the importance of non-LTE effects when measuring the D/H ratios in methanol.