Laboratory and Astronomical Identification of the Negative Molecular Ion C 6 H -

Abstract

The negative molecular ion C 6 H - has been detected in the radio band in the laboratory and has been identified in the molecular envelope of IRC +10216 and in the dense molecular cloud TMC-1. The spectroscopic constants derived from laboratory measurements of 17 rotational lines between 8 and 187 GHz are identical to those derived from the astronomical data, establishing unambiguously that C 6 H - is the carrier of the series of lines with rotational constant 1377 MHz first observed by K. Kawaguchi et al. in IRC +10216. The column density of C 6 H - toward both sources is 1%-5% that of neutral C 6 H. These surprisingly high abundances for a negative ion imply that if other molecular anions are similarly abundant with respect to their neutral counterparts, they may be detectable both in the laboratory at high resolution and in interstellar molecular clouds.