Discovery of Hydrogen Fluoride in the Cloverleaf Quasar at z = 2.56

Abstract

We report the first detection of hydrogen fluoride (HF) toward a high-redshift quasar. Using the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, we detect the HF J = 1-0 transition in absorption toward the Cloverleaf, a broad absorption line quasi-stellar object at z = 2.56. The detection is statistically significant at the ~6σ level. We estimate a lower limit of 4 × 10^(14) cm^(–2) for the HF column density and using a previous estimate of the hydrogen column density, we obtain a lower limit of 1.7 × 10^(–9) for the HF abundance. This value suggests that, assuming a Galactic N(HF)/N H ratio, HF accounts for at least ~10% of the fluorine in the gas phase along the line of sight to the Cloverleaf quasar. This observation corroborates the prediction that HF should be a good probe of the molecular gas at high redshift. Measurements of the HF abundance as a function of redshift are urgently needed to better constrain the fluorine nucleosynthesis mechanism(s).