The Galactic Centre Chimney

TL;DR

The paper reports the discovery of Galactic Centre Chimneys, X-ray structures that connect the central parsecs to the Fermi bubbles, revealing a channel for energy and mass transfer from the Galactic centre to larger scales.

Contribution

It introduces the Galactic Centre Chimneys as a new structural feature linking the Galactic centre to the Fermi bubbles, suggesting episodic energy injection mechanisms.

Findings

Discovery of X-ray structures connecting the Galactic centre to Fermi bubbles

Identification of the Galactic Centre Chimneys as energy transport channels

Evidence of episodic energy injection from the Galactic centre

Abstract

Evidence has increasingly mounted in recent decades that outflows of matter and energy from the central parsecs of our Galaxy have shaped the observed structure of the Milky Way on a variety of larger scales. On scales of ~15 pc, the Galactic centre has bipolar lobes that can be seen in both X-rays and radio, indicating broadly collimated outflows from the centre, directed perpendicular to the Galactic plane. On far larger scales approaching the size of the Galaxy itself, gamma-ray observations have identified the so-called Fermi Bubble features, implying that our Galactic centre has, or has recently had, a period of active energy release leading to a production of relativistic particles that now populate huge cavities on both sides of the Galactic plane. The X-ray maps from the ROSAT all-sky survey show that the edges of these cavities close to the Galactic plane are bright in X-rays. At intermediate scales (~150 pc), radio astronomers have found the Galactic Centre Lobe, an apparent bubble of emission seen only at positive Galactic latitudes, but again indicative of energy injection from near the Galactic centre. Here we report the discovery of prominent X-ray structures on these intermediate (hundred-parsec) scales above and below the plane, which appear to connect the Galactic centre region to the Fermi bubbles. We propose that these newly-discovered structures, which we term the Galactic Centre Chimneys, constitute a channel through which energy and mass, injected by a quasi-continuous train of episodic events at the Galactic centre, are transported from the central parsecs to the base of the Fermi bubbles.