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Published on: May 26, 2014
A combined experimental and theoretical study on the formation of interstellar C3H isomers
R I Kaiser1, C Ochsenfeld, M Head-Gordon
1Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Abstract:
The reaction of ground-state carbon atoms with acetylene was studied under single-collision conditions in crossed beam experiments to investigate the chemical dynamics of forming cyclic and linear C3H isomers (c-C3H and l-C3H, respectively) in interstellar environments via an atom-neutral reaction. Combined state-of-the-art ab initio calculations and experimental identification of the carbon-hydrogen exchange channel to both isomers classify this reaction as an important alternative to ion-molecule encounters to synthesize C3H radicals in the interstellar medium. These findings strongly correlate with astronomical observations and explain a higher [c-C3H]/[l-C3H] ratio in the dark cloud TMC-1 than in the carbon star IRC+10216.
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