2017/05/28 by Hassan Sabbah, Anthony Bonnamy, Dimitris Papanastasiou +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa73dd
17 pages, 6 figures, one table, accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2017/05/28 · arxiv updated 2017/07/05
We developed a new analytical experimental setup called AROMA (Astrochemistry Research of Organics with Molecular Analyzer) that combines laser desorption/ionization techniques with ion trap mass spectrometry. We report here on the ability of the apparatus to detect aromatic species in complex materials of astrophysical interests and characterize their structures. A limit of detection of 100 femto-grams has been achieved using pure polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) samples, which corresponds to 2x108 molecules in the case of coronene (C24H12). We detected the PAH distribution in the Murchison meteorite, which is made of a complex mixture of extraterrestrial organic compounds. In addition, collision induced dissociation experiments were performed on selected species detected in Murchison, which led to the first firm identification of pyrene and its methylated derivatives in this sample.