Investigation of the rotational spectrum of CH_3^17OH and its tentative detection toward Sagittarius B2(N)

Methanol is an abundant molecule in space. The column density of CH_3^18OH is in some star-forming regions so high that the search for CH_3^17OH is promising. But only very few transition frequencies of CH_3^17OH with a microwave accuracy have been published thus far. We recorded the rotational spectrum of CH_3^17OH between 38 and 1095 GHz employing a methanol sample enriched in ^17O to 20%. A torsion-rotation Hamiltonian model based on the rho-axis method was employed to fit the data, as in our previous studies. We searched for rotational transitions of CH_3^17OH in the imaging spectral line survey ReMoCA obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward the high-mass star-forming region Sgr B2(N). The observed spectra were modeled under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). The assignments cover 0 ≤ J ≤ 45, K_a ≤ 16, and mainly the v_ t = 0 and 1 torsional states. The Hamiltonian model describes our data well. The model was applied to derive a line list for radio-astronomical observations. We report a tentative detection of CH_3^17OH along with secure detections of the more abundant isotopologs of methanol toward Sgr B2(N2b). The derived column densities yield isotopic ratios ^12C/^13C = 25, ^16O/^18O = 240, and ^18O/^17O = 3.3, which are consistent with values found earlier for other molecules in Sgr B2. The agreement between the ^18O/^17O isotopic ratio that we obtained for methanol and the ^18O/^17O ratios reported in the past for other molecules in Sgr B2(N) strongly supports our tentative interstellar identification of CH_3^17OH. The accuracy of the derived line list is sufficient for further radio astronomical searches for this methanol isotopolog toward other star-forming regions.