Detection Of HCO+ In The Quasar APM08279 (z=3.9)

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

We report the detection of HCO+ (J=5-4) emission from the broad absorption line quasar APM08279+5255 at z=3.911 based on observations conducted at the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. This represents the first detection of this molecular ion in a high redshift galaxy. The inferred line luminosity, uncorrected for lensing, is L'(HCO+) = (4 +- 0.6) x 10^10 K/(km/s pc^2). The HCO+ (5-4) source position coincides within the errors with that reported from previous HCN (5-4) and high-J CO line observations of this quasar. This result corroborates that HCO+ (5-4) emission comes from roughly the same circumnuclear molecular disk probed by HCN. However, the HCO+ (5-4) / HCN (5-4) luminosity ratio measured in APM08279+5255 is 1, significantly smaller than that predicted by simple radiative transfer models which assume that excitation of the two lines is collisional and that the chemical abundances for the two molecular species are comparable. We discuss the implications of this result for the interpretation of molecular line mm wavelength observations of gas-rich high-redshift galaxies.

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