Astrophysical detections and databases for the mono deuterated species of acetaldehyde CH2DCOH and CH3COD

Context. Detection of deuterated species may provide information on the evolving chemistry in the earliest phases of star-forming regions. For molecules with two isomeric forms of the same isotopic variant, gas-phase and solid-state formation pathways can be differentiated using their abundance ratio.
Aims: Spectroscopic databases for astrophysical purposes are built for the two mono deuterated isomeric species CH₂DCOH and CH₃COD of the complex organic molecule acetaldehyde. These databases can be used to search and detect these two species in astrophysical surveys, retrieving their column density and therefore abundances.
Methods: Submillimeter wave and terahertz transitions were measured for mono deuterated acetaldehyde CH₂DCOH which is a non-rigid species displaying internal rotation of its asymmetrical CH₂D methyl group. An analysis of a dataset consisting of previously measured microwave data and the newly measured transition was carried out with a model accounting for the large amplitude torsion.
Results: The frequencies of 2556 transitions are reproduced with a unitless standard deviation of 2.3 yielding various spectroscopic constants. Spectroscopic databases for astrophysical purposes were built for CH₂DCOH using the results of the present analysis and for CH₃COD using the results of a previous spectroscopic investigation. These two species were both searched for and are detected toward a low-mass star-forming region.
Conclusions: We report the first detection of CH₂DCOH (93 transitions) and the detection of CH₃COD (43 transitions) species in source B of the IRAS 16293-2422 young stellar binary system located in the ρ Ophiuchus cloud region, using the publicly available ALMA Protostellar Interferometric Line Survey.

Tables 3, 4, 7, and 8 are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/624/A70