Deep Search for Phosphine in a Prestellar Core

Abstract

Understanding in which chemical forms phosphorus exists in star- and planet-forming regions and how phosphorus is delivered to planets are of great interest from the viewpoint of the origin of life on Earth. Phosphine (PH 3 ) is thought to be a key species to understanding phosphorus chemistry, but never has been detected in star- and planet-forming regions. We performed sensitive observations of the ortho-PH 3 1 0 − 0 0 transition (266.944 GHz) toward the low-mass prestellar core L1544 with the Atacama Compact Array stand-alone mode of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The line was not detected down to 3 σ levels in 0.07 km s −1 channels of 18 mK. The nondetection provides the upper limit to the gas-phase PH 3 abundance of 5 × 10 −12 with respect to H 2 in the central part of the core. Based on the gas-ice astrochemical modeling, we find the scaling relationship between the gas-phase PH 3 abundance and the volatile (gas and ice with larger volatility than water) P elemental abundance for given physical conditions. This characteristic and well-constrained physical properties of L1544 allow us to constrain the upper limit to the volatile P elemental abundance of 5 × 10 −9 , which is a factor of 60 lower than the overall P abundance in the interstellar medium. Then the majority of P should exist in refractory forms. The volatile P elemental abundance of L1544 is smaller than that in the coma of comet 67P/C-G, implying that the conversion of refractory phosphorus to volatile phosphorus could have occurred along the trail from the presolar core to the protosolar disk through, e.g., sputtering by accretion/outflow shocks.