Abstract: We present Herschel observations of the water molecule in the massive star-forming region W3 IRS5. The o-H217O 110-101, p-H218O 111-000, p-H2O 202-111, p-H2O 111-000, o-H2O 221-212, and o-H2O 212-101 lines, covering a frequency range from 552 up to 1669 GHz, have been detected at high spectral resolution with HIFI. The water lines in W3 IRS5 show well-defined high-velocity wings that indicate a clear contribution by outflows. Moreover, the systematically blue-shifted absorption in the H2O lines suggests expansion, presumably driven by the outflow. No infall signatures are detected. The p-H2O 111-000 and o-H2O 212-101 lines show absorption from the cold material (T ~ 10 K) in which the high-mass protostellar envelope is embedded. One-dimensional radiative transfer models are used to estimate water abundances and to further study the kinematics of the region. We show that the emission in the rare isotopologues comes directly from the inner parts of the envelope (T â‰<b3> 100 K) where water ices in the dust mantles evaporate and the gas-phase abundance increases. The resulting jump in the water abundance (with a constant inner abundance of 10-4) is needed to reproduce the o-H217O 110-101 and p-H218O 111-000 spectra in our models. We estimate water abundances of 10-8 to 10-9 in the outer parts of the envelope (T â‰<b2> 100 K). The possibility of two protostellar objects contributing to the emission is discussed.

Abstract: We report on the studies of the intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth of quasi-optically coupled NbN hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixers which are aimed at the optimization of the mixer performance at terahertz frequencies. Extension of the IF bandwidth due to the contribution of electron diffusion to the heat removal from NbN microbolometers has been already demonstrated for NbN HEBs at subterahertz frequencies. However, reducing the size of the microbolometer causes degradation of the noise temperature. Using in-situ multilayer manufacturing process we succeeded to improve the transparency of the contacts for electrons which go away from microbolometer to the metallic antenna. The improved transparency and hence coupling efficiency counterbalances the noise temperature degradation. HEB mixers were tested in a laboratory heterodyne receiver with a narrow-band cold filter which allowed us to eliminate direct detection. We used a local oscillator with a quantum cascade laser (QCL) at a frequency of 4.745 THz [1] which was developed for the H-Channel of the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz frequencies (GREAT). Both the noise and gain bandwidth were measured in the IF range from 0.5 to 8 GHz using the hot-cold technique and preliminary calibrated IF analyzer with a tunable microwave filter. For optimized HEB geometry we found the noise bandwidth as large as 7 GHz. We compare our results with the conventional and the hot-spot mixer models and show that further extension of the IF bandwidth should be possible via improving the sharpness of the superconducting transition. The cross characterization of the HEB mixer was performed in the test bed of GREAT at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie with the same QCL LO and delivered results which were consistent with the laboratory studies.