The starbursts in the Milky Way

TL;DR

This paper reviews the discovery and study of massive starburst regions in the Milky Way, highlighting their properties and significance in understanding high-mass star evolution and galactic impact.

Contribution

It provides an overview of observational and theoretical research on Galactic starburst regions, focusing on the Scutum Complex, Long Bar, and Westerlund 1.

Findings

Identification of multiple massive starburst regions in the Milky Way

Characterization of properties of these starburst clusters

Insights into their role in galactic evolution

Abstract

High-mass stars are major players in the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies, and young massive clusters are the natural laboratories to study their evolution and their impact on star formation processes. Only in recent years have we become aware of the existence of numerous massive (M_cl > 10000M_sun) clusters in our Galaxy. Here I give a review, rather biased towards my own research interests, of the observational and theoretical efforts that have led to a description of their properties, and present an overview of the two (perhaps three) starburst regions known outside the Galactic Centre neighbourhood: the Scutum Complex, its putative counterpart on the far side of the Long Bar, and the starburst cluster Westerlund 1.