Searching for methylamine in Orion-KL using ALMA archival data

AbstractMethylamine (CH3NH2) is the simplest amine and thought to be a potential interstellar precursor to the amino acid glycine (NH2CH2COOH). It is confirmed by the experimental work and in terms of exploration in the Solar system, CH3NH2 has been detected in two comets. However, in molecular clouds, a robust detection of CH3NH2 has been reported only for Sgr B2(N) so far, while a variety of complex organic molecules have been detected by radio observations in many star-forming regions. To search for CH3NH2, we used the ALMA Cycle 2 archival data toward Orion Kleinmann-Low nebula (Orion-KL) at Band 6 and found 5 candidate emission at the hot core region. By using the rotation diagram method, we evaluated its tentative column density and rotational temperature to be 4.9×10 cm−2 and 102 K, respectively.