C. Joblin et al., SIMULATION OF INTERSTELLAR AROMATIC-HYDROCARBONS USING ION-CYCLOTRON RESONANCE - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS, Rapid communications in mass spectrometry, 11(14), 1997, pp. 1619-1623
Using laser microprobe and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (
FTICR) mass spectrometry, we have produced and trapped aromatic specie
s which might well be laboratory analogues of interstellar polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons. These species are produced by laser ablation of
a sample of pyrolysed coronene, They are large (up to two hundred car
bon atoms) and can be highly dehydrogenated upon irradiation. More or
less condensed forms have also been identified, Although still prelimi
nary, these results open a new field of investigation: the study of th
e photophysics and chemistry of these large reactive species in isolat
ion conditions close to those found in interstellar space, This will b
e the first objective of the PIRENEA experiment, a FTICRMS set-up devo
ted to astrophysics. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.