The Processing of the Clumpy Molecular Gas in the Galactic Center and the Star-Formation

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution observations to identify dense gas clumps in the Galactic Center, revealing their potential role in star formation and their suitability for future high-mass star-formation studies.

Contribution

It provides detailed mapping of dense gas structures in the Galactic Center using SMA and GBT, highlighting their properties and potential for star formation.

Findings

Dense gas clumps are correlated with Class I methanol masers.

Clumps exhibit large linewidths (~10-20 km/s).

Clumps may serve as reservoirs for star formation.

Abstract

We present the Green Bank 100m Telescope (GBT) mapping observations of CS 1-0, and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) 157-pointings mosaic of the 0.86 mm dust continuum emission as well as several warm and dense gas tracers, in the central ~20 pc area in Galactic Center. The unprecedentedly large field-of-view and the high angular resolution of our SMA dust image allow the identification of abundant 0.1-0.2 pc scale dense gas clumps. We found that in the Galactic Center, the Class I methanol masers are excellently correlated with the dense gas clumps. However, on the ~0.1 pc scale, these dense gas clumps still have a extremely large linewidth (FWHM~10-20 km/s). Simple calculations suggest that the identified clumps can be possibly the pressurized gas reservoir feeding the formation of 1-10 solar-mass stars. These gas clumps may be the most promising candidates for ALMA to resolve the high-mass star-formation in the Galactic center.