📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

The study of the chemical composition of star-forming regions is key to understand the chemical ingredients available during the formation of planetary systems. Given that the chemical inventory on interstellar dust grains in the prestellar phases might be altered due to the prostostellar warm-up, an alternative to infer the chemical composition on the grains could be to observe regions affected by shocks associated with molecular outflows. Such shocks can desorb the molecules, and might produce less chemical processing due to shorter timescales. We present here a detailed study of the chemical reservoir of a shocked region located in the G31.41+0.31 protocluster using GUAPOS data (G31.41+0.31 Unbiased ALMA sPectral Observational Survey). We report here the detection of 30 molecular species (plus 18 isotopologues). We performed a comparison of the molecular ratios in the shocked region with those derived towards the hot core of G31.41+0.31, finding that they are poorly correlated, excepting N-bearing species. Our results confirm observationally that a different level of chemical alteration is present in hot cores and in shocks. While the former likely alter the molecular ratios due to thermal processing during longer timescales, the latter might represent freshly desorbed material that constitutes a better proxy of the icy mantle composition. The similarity of molecular ratios between the N-bearing species in the G31.41 shock and the hot core suggests that these species are desorbed at early evolutionary stages. Interestingly, we have found that the abundances in the G31.41 shock show better correlations with other shock-dominated regions (two protostellar outflows and a Galactic Center molecular cloud). This suggests a negligible gas-phase chemistry after shock-induced ejection from grains, and that the ice-mantle composition is similar regardless of the Galactic environment.