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In diffuse interstellar clouds the chemistry that leads to the formation of the oxygen-bearing ions OH+, H2O+, and H3O+ begins with the ionization of atomic hydrogen by cosmic rays, and continues through subsequent hydrogen abstraction reactions involving H2. Given these reaction pathways, the observed abundances of these molecules are useful in constraining both the total cosmic-ray ionization rate of atomic hydrogen (ζH) and molecular hydrogen fraction (). We present observations targeting transitions of OH+, H2O+, and H3O+ made with the Herschel Space Observatory along 20 Galactic sight lines toward bright submillimeter continuum sources. Both OH+ and H2O+ are detected in absorption in multiple velocity components along every sight line, but H3O+ is only detected along 7 sight lines. From the molecular abundances we compute in multiple distinct components along each line of sight, and find a Gaussian distribution with mean and standard deviation 0.042 ± 0.018. This confirms previous findings that OH+ and H2O+ primarily reside in gas with low H2 fractions. We also infer ζH throughout our sample, and find a lognormal distribution with mean log (ζH) = –15.75 (ζH = 1.78 × 10–16 s–1) and standard deviation 0.29 for gas within the Galactic disk, but outside of the Galactic center. This is in good agreement with the mean and distribution of cosmic-ray ionization rates previously inferred from H observations. Ionization rates in the Galactic center tend to be 10-100 times larger than found in the Galactic disk, also in accord with prior studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen fluoride (HF) has been established to be an excellent tracer of molecular hydrogen in diffuse clouds. In denser environments, however, the HF abundance has been shown to be approximately two orders of magnitude lower. We present Herschel/HIFI observations of HF J = 1-0 toward two high-mass star formation sites, NGC 6334 I and AFGL 2591. In NGC 6334 I the HF line is seen in absorption in foreground clouds and the source itself, while in AFGL 2591 HF is partially in emission. We find an HF abundance with respect to H2 of 1.5 × 10–8 in the diffuse foreground clouds, whereas in the denser parts of NGC 6334 I we derive a lower limit on the HF abundance of 5 × 10–10. Lower HF abundances in dense clouds are most likely caused by freezeout of HF molecules onto dust grains in high-density gas. In AFGL 2591, the view of the hot core is obstructed by absorption in the massive outflow, in which HF is also very abundant (3.6 × 10–8) due to the desorption by sputtering. These observations provide further evidence that the chemistry of interstellar fluorine is controlled by freezeout onto gas grains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]