Identification of interstellar amino acetonitrile in the hot molecular core G10.47+0.03: Possible glycine survey candidate for the future

TL;DR

This study reports the detection of amino acetonitrile, a potential glycine precursor, in the hot core G10.47+0.03, providing insights into prebiotic molecule formation in interstellar space.

Contribution

The paper presents the first detection of amino acetonitrile in G10.47+0.03 and compares its abundance with theoretical models, advancing understanding of prebiotic chemistry in space.

Findings

Amino acetonitrile detected with a column density of (9.10±0.7)×10^{15} cm^{-2}

Estimated fractional abundance of amino acetonitrile is 7.01×10^{-8}

Observed abundance agrees with theoretical warm-up model predictions

Abstract

Amino acids are the essential keys that contribute to the study of the formation of life. The simplest amino acid, glycine (NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH), has been searched for a long time in the interstellar medium, but all surveys of glycine have failed. Since the detection of glycine in the interstellar medium was extremely difficult, we aimed to search for the precursor of glycine. After detailed searches of the individual prebiotic molecular species, we successfully identified the emission lines of possible glycine precursor molecule amino acetonitrile (NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$CN) towards the hot molecular core G10.47+0.03 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array. We estimated the statistical column density of amino acetonitrile was (9.10$\pm$0.7)$\times$10$^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ with rotational temperature ($T_{rot}$) 122$\pm$8.8 K. The estimated fractional abundance of amino acetonitrile was 7.01$\times$10$^{-8}$. We found that the estimated fractional abundance of NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$CN fairly agrees with the theoretical value predicted by the three-phase warm-up model from Garrod (2013).