H2CO Absorption of the Cosmic Microwave Background: A Distance-Independent Tracer of Dense Molecular Gas

Details H2CO Absorption of the Cosmic Microwave Background: A Distance-Independent Tracer of Dense Molecular Gas H2CO Absorption of the Cosmic Microwave Background: A Distance-Independent Tracer of Dense Molecular Gas

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21541504z&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #415.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.261

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Centimeter ortho-formaldehyde (H2CO) transitions in dense molecular clouds are often "refrigerated" by collisions with molecular hydrogen, allowing H2CO to absorb cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. We present radiative transfer modeling indicating that collisions with molecular hydrogen will maintain this anti-inversion to high redshift (z>6), making H2CO visible in absorption against the CMB from the present epoch to the early universe. Our observations of H2CO at redshifts as high as 0.89 support these results. Moreover, we show that H2CO cm lines offer a nearly redshift-independent tracer of dense molecular gas for beam-matched observations of the star-forming regions of galaxies.

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