Detection of the Ammonium Ion in Space

We report on the detection of a narrow feature at 262816.73 MHz toward Orion and the cold prestellar core B1-bS which we attribute to the 1₀-0₀ line of the deuterated ammonium ion, NH₃D⁺. The observations were performed with the IRAM 30 m radio telescope. The carrier has to be a light molecular species as it is the only feature detected over 3.6 GHz of bandwidth. The hyperfine structure is not resolved, indicating a very low value for the electric quadrupolar coupling constant of nitrogen which is expected for NH₃D⁺ as the electric field over the N nucleus is practically zero. Moreover, the feature is right at the predicted frequency for the 1₀-0₀ transition of the ammonium ion, 262817 ± 6 MHz (3σ), using rotational constants derived from new infrared data obtained in our laboratory in Madrid. The estimated column density is (1.1 ± 0.2) × 10¹² cm^-2. Assuming a deuterium enhancement similar to that of NH₂D, we derive N(NH_4^+) ~= 2.6 × 10¹³ cm^-2, i.e., an abundance for ammonium of a few 10^-11.

This work was based on observations carried out with the IRAM 30 m telescope. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain)