The Spectroscopic Search for H- in Astrophysical Environments

Details The Spectroscopic Search for H- in Astrophysical Environments The Spectroscopic Search for H- in Astrophysical Environments

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aas...20311006s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 203, #110.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, p.1379

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

The negative ion H- is widely understood to be important in many astrophysical environments, including the atmospheres of late-type stars like the Sun. However, the ion has never been detected spectroscopically outside of the laboratory. A search for the far ultraviolet auto-ionizing transitions of H- in interstellar and circumstellar matter seems to be the best hope for directly detecting this ion. We undertook a highly sensitive search using data from the FUSE far-UV instrument. We concentrated on two types of sightlines; planetary nebulae, where model calculations suggest a significant abundance of H-, and translucent clouds, where H- might form on dust grains as an intermediate step during molecular hydrogen formation. Our upper limit column density of H- is 3*1014 cm-2. This limit is too high to be useful in the case of circumstellar shells of planetary nebulae, but it is close to predicted column densities for translucent clouds if indeed H- is part of the H2 formation process, and could constrain or even eliminate this model.
This work was funded through NASA contract NAS5-32985. The research made use of the MAST FUSE archive.

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