Calcium-bearing cyanopolyynes in IRC+10216

Abstract In recent years, a number of metal-containing, carbon-chain species have been detected in the external circumstellar envelope of the carbon-rich AGB star IRC+10216. The most comoon metal detected in such species is Mg, for which molecules as large as MgC5N, MgC5N+ MgC6H and MgC6H+ have been observed. In this paper, we calculate the likely abundances of the Ca-bearing cyanopolyynes, CaC2n + 1N for n = 1-4, drawing the conclusion that the observed abundance of CaNC must be made from much larger Ca-terminated cyanopolyyne ions, which requires considerable rearrangement in their dissociative recombination. We pay particular attention to the detectability of CaC3N whose rotational spectrum has recently been measured.