Cm and mm Survey of Molecular Absorption Lines in Centaurus A

TLDR: In this article, the Australia Telescope Array data of molecular absorption lines toward the bright central core of Centaurus A is presented, where the line of sight crosses the prominent dust lane and continues through the disk and eventually through gas that may be very close to the central supermassive black hole.

Abstract: We present Australia Telescope Array data of molecular absorption lines toward the bright central core of Centaurus A. The line of sight crosses the prominent dust lane and continues through the disk and eventually through gas that may be very close to the central supermassive black hole. The goal of our the survey is to determine the physical conditions of the gas via analyses of molecular line tracers including molecular abundances and excitation that is sensitive to changes in temperature, density, ionization, and shocks. This study allows us to derive the physical conditions of every absorption line complex and finally let us assign the most likely environments. We present ATCA data in the 20-50GHz range at medium resolution of a few km/s and possibly ALMA data at 3mm and 1mm wavelengths. The project continues with sub-km/s higher spectral resolution for the most important lines in 2012.