Observation of HCN hyperfine line anomalies towards low- and high-mass
  star-forming cores
  HCN is becoming a popular choice of molecule for studying star formation in
both low- and high-mass regions and for other astrophysical sources from comets
to high-redshift galaxies. However, a major and often overlooked difficulty
with HCN is that it can exhibit non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE)
behaviour in its hyperfine line structure. Individual hyperfine lines can be
strongly boosted or suppressed. In low-mass star-forming cloud observations,
this could possibly lead to large errors in the calculation of opacity and
excitation temperature, while in massive star-forming clouds, where the
hyperfine lines are blended due to turbulent broadening, errors will arise in
infall measurements that are based on the separation of the peaks in a
self-absorbed profile. The underlying line shape cannot be known for certain if
hyperfine anomalies are present. We present a first observational investigation
of these anomalies across a range of conditions and transitions by carrying out
a survey of low-mass starless cores (in Taurus & Ophiuchus) and high-mass
protostellar objects (in the G333 giant molecular cloud) using hydrogen cyanide
(HCN) J=1-0 and J=3-2 emission lines. We quantify the degree of anomaly in
these two rotational levels by considering ratios of individual hyperfine lines
compared to LTE values. We find that all the cores observed show some degree of
anomaly while many of the lines are severely anomalous. We conclude that HCN
hyperfine anomalies are common in both lines in both low-mass and high-mass
protostellar objects, and we discuss the differing hypotheses for the
generation of the anomalies. In light of the results, we favour a line overlap
effect for the origins of the anomalies. We discuss the implications for the
use of HCN as a dynamical tracer and suggest in particular that the J=1-0,
F=0-1 hyperfine line should be avoided in quantitative calculations.
