# The ortho-to-para ratio of ammonia in the L1157 outflow Based on observations made at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO). Nobeyama Radio Observatory is a branch of the National Astronomical Observatory, an inter-university research institute operated by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sport, and Culture, Japan.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The inversion lines of metastable ammonia have been extensively used for observations of dense ($``$10<sup>4</sup> cm<sup>-3</sup>) molecular cloud cores (e.g. Myers & Benson 1983; Benson & Myers 1989), while the fractional abundance of NH<sub>3</sub> varies among the clouds (Benson & Myers 1983). On the basis of a systematic survey, Suzuki et al. (1992) pointed out that the NH<sub>3</sub> tends to be more abundant in the star-forming cores than the starless cores. Such a trend is interpreted in terms of the gas-phase chemical evolution which predicts that the NH<sub>3</sub> is deficient in the early stages of chemical evolution and becomes abundant in the later stages (e.g. Herbst & Leung 1989; Suzuki et al. 1992). In addition to the gas-phase chemical evolution, the gas-grain interaction is also considered to be important for the abundance variation of NH<sub>3</sub> (e.g. d’Hendecourt, Allamandola, & Greenberg 1985; Brown & Charnley 1990; Nejad, Williams, & Charnley 1990; Flower, Pineau des Forêts & Walmsley 1995). In the star-forming dense cores, the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules retained on dust grains can be released into gas phase by means of shock waves caused by the outflow and the radiation from the newly formed star (e.g. Nejad et al. 1990; Flower et al. 1995), and are expected to contribute to increase the NH<sub>3</sub> abundance.

Usually, it is not easy to estimate contribution of molecules desorbed from dust grains from those formed in the gas phase. However in the case of NH<sub>3</sub>, an ortho-to-para ratio of NH<sub>3</sub> provides us with such information. Ammonia has two distinct species, the ortho-NH<sub>3</sub> ($`K=3n`$) and the para-NH<sub>3</sub> ($`K3n`$), which arise from different relative orientations of the three hydrogen spins. The ortho-to-para ratio is expected to be the statistical equilibrium value of 1.0 when the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules are formed in the processes of gas-phase reactions or grain surface reactions. This is because the reactions to form the NH<sub>3</sub> molecule release large excess energies compared to the energy difference between the lowest ortho and para states, which make the ortho-to-para ratio close to the statistical value. However, the ortho-to-para ratio is expected to be larger than unity when the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules adsorbed on grain surface released into the gas phase with the excess energy for desorption which is comparable to the energy difference between the ortho and para states. This is because the lowest energy level of the para species is 23 K higher than that of the ortho species, para species require more energy for desorption than ortho species. The time scale of the interconversion between ortho-NH<sub>3</sub> and para- NH<sub>3</sub> is considered to be the order of 10<sup>6</sup> yr in the gas phase (Cheung et al. 1969). Therefore, the ortho-to-para ratio provides us with valuable information on physical conditions and chemical processes when the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules are released into the gas phase.

Since the lowest energy level of ortho-NH<sub>3</sub>, ($`J,K`$) = (0, 0), has no inversion doubling, it is necessary to observe the transitions higher than ($`J,K`$) = (3, 3) to measure the ortho-to-para ratio. Such high transitions are hardly excited in the dark clouds of low temperature, however, recent observations have revealed that shocked gas associated with molecular outflows in the dark clouds is heated enough to excite the transitions higher than ($`J,K`$) = (3, 3). One of the prototypical objects with shock-heated gas is the bipolar outflow in the dark cloud L1157 (e.g. Umemoto et al. 1992) which is located at 440 pc from the sun (Viotti 1969). Previous NH<sub>3</sub> observations have revealed that the gas in the outflow is heated to more than 50–100 K (Bachiller, Martín-Pintado, & Fuente 1993; Tafalla & Bachiller 1995). A good morphological coincidence of the NH<sub>3</sub> distribution (Tafalla & Bachiller 1995) with that of the SiO ($`J`$=2–1) emission (Zang et al. 1995; Gueth et al. 1998), which is considered to be a good tracer of the shocked molecular gas, reveals that the hot ammonia arises from the shocked gas. The NH<sub>3</sub> abundance enhancement observed in the shocked gas (Tafalla & Bachiller 1995) suggests the possibility that the NH<sub>3</sub> retained on grain mantles is released into the gas-phase by means of shocks.

In this Letter, we report the observations of six metastable inversion lines of NH<sub>3</sub> from ($`J,K`$) = (1, 1) to (6, 6) toward the blueshifted lobe of the L1157 outflow. We have detected the high excitation NH<sub>3</sub> (5, 5) and (6, 6) lines for the first time in the low-mass star forming regions. Of six observed transitions, the (3, 3) and (6, 6) states belong to ortho- NH<sub>3</sub> and the other four states belong to para-NH<sub>3</sub>. The detection of both (6, 6) and (3, 3) emission enables us to measure the ortho-to-para ratio which provides us with information on the contribution of ammonia molecules desorbed from grains.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS

The observations were carried out in 1991 June and 1992 May with the 45m telescope of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory. We observed six inversion transitions of the metastabel ammonia, ($`J,K`$) = (1,1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5), and (6, 6), toward three positions along the blueshifted lobe of the CO outflow. The position offsets from IRAS 20386+6751 (hereafter referred to as L1157 IRS), $`\alpha `$(1950) = 20<sup>h</sup>38<sup>m</sup>39.<sup>s</sup>6, $`\delta `$(1950) = 675133<sup>′′</sup>, are (0<sup>′′</sup>, 0<sup>′′</sup>), (20<sup>′′</sup>, -60<sup>′′</sup>), and (45<sup>′′</sup>, -105<sup>′′</sup>), which were referred as positions A, B, and C, respectively by Mikami et al. (1992). Positions B and C correspond to the tips of two CO cavities (Gueth, Guilloteau, & Bachiller 1996), toward which strong NH<sub>3</sub> (3, 3) and SiO ($`J`$=2–1) emission lines are observed (Tafalla & Bachiller 1995; Zhang et al. 1995; Gueth et al. 1998). We also observed the (1, 1), (2, 2), and (3, 3) transitions toward additional two positions outside of the lobe and one position toward the peak of the redshifted CO emission. The observed positions are shown in Figure 1 superposed on the CO ($`J`$=1–0) outflow map observed by Umemoto et al. (1992). The lowest three transitions were observed simultaneously. The higher three transitions were also observed simultaneously. At the observed frequencies, the telescope had a beam size of 72<sup>′′</sup> and the beam efficiency of 0.8. The frontend was a cooled HEMT receiver whose typical system noise temperature was $``$200 K. The backend was a bank of eight acousto-optical spectrometers with 37 kHz resolution, which corresponds to a velocity resolution of 0.50 km s<sup>-1</sup>. All the observations were made in position switching mode. To obtain the spectra, we have integrated 45 minutes per position, the resulting rms noise level per channel was $``$ 0.02 K.

## 3 RESULTS

In Figure 2, we show the spectra of six transitions observed at positions A, B, and C. At position A, a strong (1, 1) line and weak (2, 2) and (3, 3) lines are observed. No emission from the transitions higher than (4, 4) has been detected. The (1, 1) line observed at position A shows the quiescent component peaked at V<sub>LSR</sub> = 2.85 km s<sup>-1</sup>, which is almost the same as the cloud systemic velocity of $``$2.7 km s<sup>-1</sup> derived from the <sup>13</sup>CO observations (Umemoto et al. 1992), with a weak blueshifted wing. The (2, 2) and (3, 3) lines appear in the velocity range of the (1, 1) wing emission, suggesting that these line profiles are contaminated by the blueshifted component in the southern lobe because of the large beam size of 72<sup>′′</sup>. Since the (2, 2) and (3, 3) lines show no significant emission at the velocity of the quiescent component, the rotational temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$, of the quiescent component is estimated to be $``$10 K.

At positions B and C, all six transitions up to (6, 6) were detected. The (5, 5) and (6, 6) lines are first detected in the low-mass star forming regions. All transition lines except the (1, 1) one have peak velocities blueshifted by 1–2 km s<sup>-1</sup> from the cloud systemic velocity and show broad widths of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ $``$4–10 km s<sup>-1</sup> (measured at 1$`\sigma `$ level), indicating that the emission of the higher energy level arises from the high velocity gas. The (3, 3) line profiles at positions B and C resemble the profiles of the SiO (J=2-1) and CS (J=2-1) lines observed by Mikami et al. (1992). Among the six transition lines, the (3, 3) line is the strongest as previously pointed out by Bachiller et al. (1993). The peak brightness temperatures of the (2, 2), (3, 3), and (4, 4) lines observed at position B are lower by a factor of 1.5–2 than those observed by Bachiller et al. (1993) at the same position. This may be due to the beam dilution effect, because the spatial extent of the ammonia emitting area is smaller than our beam ( Bachiller et al. 1993; Tafalla & Bachiller 1995).

Toward three other positions outside the blueshifted lobe, we have detected only the (1, 1) emission line at the systemic velocity.

## 4 DISCUSSION

### 4.1 Temperature and Ortho-to-para Ratio of the High-Velocity Gas

To obtain the rotational temperature $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ of the blueshifted gas, we assumed optically thin emission, and constructed rotation diagrams, i.e., the logarithms of NH<sub>3</sub> column densities divided by statistical weight of the transition, plotted against the energy above the ground state. The contribution of the quiescent component in the (1, 1) line was eliminated by performing the multi-components gaussian fitting. The rotational temperature estimated from the (1, 1) and (2, 2) data, $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(1,1; 2,2) is 38 K at positions B and is 48 K at position C. These temperatures are a factor of 4 to 5 higher than that of the quiescent component at position A. Figure 3 shows that the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ obtained from the data of higher transitions are significantly higher than $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(1,1; 2,2). The rotational temperature obtained from the para-NH<sub>3</sub> (4, 4) and (5, 5) data, $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(4,4; 5,5), are $``$130 K for both positions B and C. The slopes between the ortho-NH<sub>3</sub> (3, 3) and (6, 6) data are almost parallel to those between the para-NH<sub>3</sub> (4, 4) and (5, 5) ones, indicating that $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(3,3; 6,6) is comparable to $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(4,4; 5,5).

It should be noted that the column densities of the ortho species are higher than those of para species; this suggests that the ortho species are more abundant than the para species. If we assume an ortho-to-para ratio to be $``$1.5, the data of four transitions involving the ortho- and para-states align on the straight lines; the best fits provide an ortho-to-para ratio at position B to be 1.7$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{+0.2}{0.3}`$ and that at position C to be 1.3$`\pm `$0.2. Then we obtain the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ at position B is 140$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{+4}{3}`$K (the upper and lower limit of the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ correspond to those of the ortho-to-para ratio, respectively) and that at position C is 125$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{+3}{4}`$K.

The discrepancy between the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(1,1; 2,2) and the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ derived from the higher transition data can be explained by two components of gas with different kinetic temperatures as suggested by Avery & Chiao (1996) from their SiO observations. However, we consider that the most of the gas traced by the NH<sub>3</sub> emission is heated to 130–140 K in the following reason. It is known that the metastable populations may deviate from a true Boltzmann distribution due to collisional depopulation of the higher nonmetastable levels. As argued by Danby et al. (1988), the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ tends to underestimate the gas kinetic temperatures $`T_\mathrm{k}`$, at the $`T_\mathrm{k}`$ range higher than $``$ 30 K. Since the difference is remarkable for the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ derived from the lower $`J`$ transitions, the $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ estimated from the higher transitions is considered to be the better indicator of the kinetic temperature than $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$(1,1; 2,2). Such two rotational temperatures were also observed in the M17SW molecular cloud (Güsten & Fiebig 1988).

### 4.2 Ammonia Abundance Enhancement

The beam-averaged NH<sub>3</sub> column density in the quiescent gas at position A is estimated to be $`N`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 2 $`\times `$ 10<sup>14</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>. When we employed the H<sub>2</sub> column density of the ambient gas derived from the <sup>13</sup>CO and C<sup>18</sup>O observations ($`N`$(H<sub>2</sub>) = 3$`\times `$10<sup>21</sup> cm<sup>-1</sup>), the NH<sub>3</sub> abundance for the quiescent component is estimated to be $`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 7 $`\times `$10<sup>-8</sup>, which is comparable to those measured in nearby dense cores ($`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = (3–10) $`\times `$10<sup>-8</sup>; Benson & Myers 1983). The $`N`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) in the blueshifted gas averaged over the beam at positions B and C are calculated to be 1$`\times `$10<sup>14</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> and 7$`\times `$10<sup>13</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>, respectively. The H<sub>2</sub> column densities of the blueshifted gas were estimated from the CO ($`J`$=1–0) data obtained at the NRO 45m telescope (beam size was 16<sup>′′</sup>) by convolving the data with the 72<sup>′′</sup> gaussian beam and assuming the optically thin CO emission, $`T_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ = 130 K, and H<sub>2</sub>/CO abundance ratio of 10<sup>4</sup>. They are estimated to be 7$`\times `$10<sup>21</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> toward position B and 2$`\times `$10<sup>21</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> toward position C. By using these H<sub>2</sub> column densities, we obtained $`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 1$`\times `$10<sup>-7</sup> at position B and $`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 3$`\times `$10<sup>-7</sup> at position C, which are a factor of 2–5 higher than that of the quiescent component. The NH<sub>3</sub> column densities derived by Tafalla & Bachiller (1995) from their high-resolution VLA data are $``$5$`\times `$10<sup>14</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> toward both positions B and C. If we compare these values with the $`N`$(H<sub>2</sub>) in the 16<sup>′′</sup> beam derived from the CO ($`J`$=1–0) data by assuming an excitation temperature of 130 K, which are 2$`\times `$10<sup>21</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> for position B and 8$`\times `$10<sup>20</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> for position C, we obtained $`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 3$`\times `$10<sup>-7</sup> and $`X`$(NH<sub>3</sub>) = 7$`\times `$10<sup>-7</sup> for positions B and C, respectively. The H<sub>2</sub> column densities used here may be somewhat underestimated because the sizes of the NH<sub>3</sub> enhanced regions ($`<`$ 10<sup>′′</sup>) in the map of Tafalla & Bachiller (1995) are smaller than the beam size of the CO data. When we take this into account, the ammonia abundances obtained from the higher resolution data are consistent with those from the 72<sup>′′</sup> resolution data. Therefore, we conclude that the NH<sub>3</sub> abundance in the shocked regions is enhanced by a factor of $``$5.

### 4.3 Ortho-to-para Ratio and Its Implication for the Contribution of Desorbed Ammonia

The derived ortho-to-para ratio in the blueshifted gas which is larger than the statistical value of 1.0 suggests that significant amount of NH<sub>3</sub> observed in the blueshifted gas has been evaporated from dust grains. The evaporation of ammonia is supported by the fact that the ammonia abundance is enhanced in the blueshifted gas. If we assume that all of the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules observed in the blueshifted gas were from dust grains, the observed ratio of 1.3–1.7 suggest that the population of the rotational levels of NH<sub>3</sub> at the time of ejection from the grain surface is represented by a Boltzmann distribution with the temperature of 18–25 K. This formation temperature would be related to the excess energy distributed to the rotational degree of freedom in desorption processes, and are not necessarily equal to the dust temperature or the gas kinetic temperature (Takayanagi, Sakimoto, & Onda 1987). It is most likely that the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules retained on grains have been provided with sufficient energy to desorb from the grain surfaces by the passage of shocks (e.g. Nejad et al. 1990; Flower et al. 1995). The rotational temperature of 130–140 K suggests that the shock heating may be responsible for the desorption of the NH<sub>3</sub> molecules. Sandford & Allamandola (1993) revealed that the sublimation of ammonia drastically increases as a function of temperature: the residence time of NH<sub>3</sub> on a dust grain which is 10<sup>13</sup> yr at 40 K becomes only 10<sup>-7</sup> yr at 100 K.

Recently, the infrared spectroscopic observations with Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and ground-based telescopes reported that the abundance of the solid NH<sub>3</sub> (relative to H<sub>2</sub>O) in icy grain mantle is no more than a few percent (e.g. Whittet et al. 1996a, b). These results imply that the NH<sub>3</sub> molecule desorbed from grains is less important than previously expected (e.g. d’Hendecourt et al. 1985; Brown & Charnley 1990; Nejad et al. 1990). However, the ortho-to-para ratio measured in the L1157 outflow indicates that significant amount of NH<sub>3</sub> arises from dust grains and that the gas-grain chemistry plays an important role in determining the NH<sub>3</sub> abundance.

We would like to thank the staff of NRO for the operation of our observations and their support in data reduction. We also thank Drs. S. Takano, K. Kawaguchi, Y. Hirahara, Y. Taniguchi, and J. Tkahashi for helpful comments. N.H. acknowledges support from a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sport, and Culture of Japan, No. 09640315.