3-D CMZ II: Hierarchical Structure Analysis of the Central Molecular Zone

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 3-D structure, star formation properties, and role in regulating this gas inflow. In this work, we id...

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Published in:arXiv.org 2024-12
Main Authors: Battersby, Cara, Walker, Daniel L, Barnes, Ashley, Ginsburg, Adam, Lipman, Dani, Alboslani, Danya, H Perry Hatchfield, Bally, John, Glover, Simon C O, Henshaw, Jonathan D, Immer, Katharina, Klessen, Ralf S, Longmore, Steven N, Mills, Elisabeth A C, Molinari, Sergio, Smith, Rowan, Sormani, Mattia C, Tress, Robin G, Zhang, Qizhou
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Columnar structure
Cosmic dust
Density
Distribution functions
External pressure
Galaxy distribution
Kinematics
Milky Way
Molecular clouds
Molecular structure
Power law
Probability distribution functions
Star & galaxy formation
Star formation
Structural analysis
Three dimensional flow
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Summary: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 3-D 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 (Battersby et al., submitted). We calculate the physical (\(N\)(H\(_2\)), \(T_{\rm{dust}}\), mass, radius) and kinematic (HNCO, HCN, and HC\(_3\)N moments) properties of each structure as well as their bolometric luminosities and star formation rates (SFRs). 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 (\(P_e\)/k\(_B\) \(> 10^{7-9}\) K 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 equilibriuim. We perform power-law fits to the column density probability distribution functions (N-PDFs) 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
ISSN:2331-8422