A three-phase chemical model of hot cores: the formation of glycine

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive chemical model of hot cores that simulates gas, grain, and ice chemistry, predicting glycine formation and comparing results with observations, highlighting the molecule's formation pathways and detection prospects.

Contribution

It introduces a fully-coupled three-phase chemical model including glycine formation mechanisms and validates it against observational data, improving understanding of complex organic molecule synthesis in hot cores.

Findings

Glycine forms via radical-addition mechanisms on dust grains.

Peak gas-phase glycine abundance occurs around 200 K.

Detection of glycine with ALMA is highly plausible in suitable sources.

Abstract

A new chemical model is presented that simulates fully-coupled gas-phase, grain-surface and bulk-ice chemistry in hot cores. Glycine (NH2CH2COOH), the simplest amino acid, and related molecules such as glycinal, propionic acid and propanal, are included in the chemical network. Glycine is found to form in moderate abundance within and upon dust-grain ices via three radical-addition mechanisms, with no single mechanism strongly dominant. Glycine production in the ice occurs over temperatures ~40-120 K. Peak gas-phase glycine fractional abundances lie in the range 8 x 10^{-11} - 8 x 10^{-9}, occuring at ~200 K, the evaporation temperature of glycine. A gas-phase mechanism for glycine production is tested and found insignificant, even under optimal conditions. A new spectroscopic radiative-transfer model is used, allowing the translation and comparison of the chemical-model results with observations of specific sources. Comparison with the nearby hot-core source NGC 6334 IRS1 shows excellent agreement with integrated line intensities of observed species, including methyl formate. The results for glycine are consistent with the current lack of a detection of this molecule toward other sources; the high evaporation temperature of glycine renders the emission region extremely compact. Glycine detection with ALMA is predicted to be highly plausible, for bright, nearby sources with narrow emission lines. Photodissociation of water and subsequent hydrogen-abstraction from organic molecules by OH, and NH2, are crucial to the build-up of complex organic species in the ice. The inclusion of alternative branches within the network of radical-addition reactions appears important to the abundances of hot-core molecules; less favorable branching ratios may remedy the anomalously high abundance of glycolaldehyde predicted by this and previous models.