Abstract The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is the way station at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, connecting gas flowing in from Galactic scales with the central nucleus. Key open questions remain about its 3D structure, star formation properties, and role in regulating this gas inflow. In this work, we identify a hierarchy of discrete structures in the CMZ using column density maps from Paper I (C. Battersby et al.) We calculate the physical (N(H2),Tdust, mass, radius) and kinematic (HNCO, HCN, and HC3N moments) properties of each structure as well as their bolometric luminosities and star formation rates. We compare these properties with regions in the Milky Way disk and external galaxies. Despite the fact that the CMZ overall is well below the Gao-Solomon dense gas star formation relation (and in modest agreement with the Schmidt–Kennicutt relation), individual structures on the scale of molecular clouds generally follow these star formation relations and agree well with other Milky Way and extragalactic regions. We find that individual CMZ structures require a large external pressure (Pe/kB> 107−9K cm−3) to be considered bound; however, simple estimates suggest that most CMZ molecular-cloud-sized structures are consistent with being in pressure-bounded virial equilibrium. We perform power-law fits to the column density probability distribution functions of the inner 100 pc, SgrB2, and the outer 100 pc of the CMZ as well as several individual molecular cloud structures and find generally steeper power-law slopes (−9 <α< −2) compared with the literature (−6 <α< −1).
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Whole-disk Sampling of Molecular Clouds in M83
Abstract We present a catalog of clouds identified from the12CO (1–0) data of M83, which was observed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array with a spatial resolution of ∼46 pc and a mass sensitivity of ∼104M⊙(3σ). The almost full-disk coverage and high sensitivity of the data allowed us to sample 5724 molecular clouds with a median mass of ∼1.9 × 105M⊙, which is comparable to the most frequently sampled mass of giant molecular clouds by surveys in the Milky Way (MW). About 60% of the total CO luminosity in M83's disk arises from clouds more massive than 106M⊙. Such massive clouds comprise 16% of the total clouds in number and tend to concentrate toward the arm, bar, and center, while smaller clouds are more prevalent in interarm regions. Most >106M⊙clouds have peak brightness temperaturesTpeakabove 2 K with the current resolution. Comparing the observed cloud properties with the scaling relations determined by P. M. Solomon et al. (1987, hereafter S87),Tpeak> 2 K clouds follow the relations, butTpeak< 2 K clouds, which are dominant in number, deviate significantly. Without considering the effect of beam dilution, the deviations would suggest modestly high virial parameters (medianαvir∼ 2.7) and low surface mass densities (median Σ ∼ 22M⊙pc−2) for the entire cloud samples, which are similar to values found for the MW clouds by T. S. Rice et al. (2016) and M.-A Miville-Deschênes et al. (2017). However, once beam dilution is taken into account, the observedαvirand Σ for a majority of the clouds (mostlyTpeak<2 K) can be potentially explained with intrinsic Σ of ∼100M⊙pc−2andαvirof ∼1, which are similar to the clouds of S87.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2006600
- PAR ID:
- 10649851
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 976
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 198
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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