Re-exploring Molecular Complexity with ALMA: Insights into chemical differentiation from the molecular composition of hot cores in Sgr B2(N2)

Context . Hot molecular cores correspond to the phase of star formation during which many molecules, in particular complex organic molecules (COMs), thermally desorb from the surface of dust grains. Sophisticated kinetic models of interstellar chemistry describe the processes that lead to the formation and subsequent evolution of COMs in star-forming regions. Aims . Our goal is to derive the chemical composition of hot cores in order to improve our understanding of interstellar chemistry. In particular, we want to test the models by comparing their predictions to the observed composition of the gas phase of hot cores. Methods . We used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to perform an imaging spectral line survey of the high mass star-forming region Sagittarius B2(N) at 3 mm, called Re-exploring Molecular Complexity with ALMA (ReMoCA). We modeled under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium the spectra obtained with this survey toward the sources embedded in the secondary hot core Sgr B2(N2). We compared the chemical composition of these sources to that of sources from the literature and to predictions of the chemical kinetics model MAGICKAL. Results . We detected up to 58 molecules toward Sgr B2(N2)’s hot cores, including up to 24 COMs, as well as many less abundant isotopologs. The compositions of some pairs of sources are well correlated, but differences also exist, in particular for HNCO and NH 2 CHO. The abundances of series of homologous molecules drop by about one order of magnitude at each further step in complexity. The nondetection of radicals yields stringent constraints on the models. The comparison to the chemical models confirms previous evidence of a high cosmic-ray ionization rate in Sgr B2(N). The comparison to sources from the literature gives a new insight into chemical differentiation. The composition of most hot cores of Sgr B2(N2) is tightly correlated to that of the hot core G31.41+0.31 and the hot corino IRAS 16293–2422 B after normalizing the abundances by classes of molecules (O-bearing, N-bearing, O+N-bearing, and S-bearing). There is no overall correlation between Sgr B2(N2) and the shocked region G+0.693−0.027 also located in Sgr B2, and even less with the cold starless core TMC-1. The class of N-bearing species reveals the largest variance among the four classes of molecules. The S-bearing class shows in contrast the smallest variance. Conclusions . These results imply that the class of N-bearing molecules reacts more sensitively to shocks, low-temperature gas phase chemistry after nonthermal desorption, or density. The overall abundance shifts observed between the N-bearing and O-bearing molecules may indicate how violently and completely the ice mantles are desorbed.