Co-moving groups around massive stars in the Nuclear Stellar Disk

TL;DR

This study searches for young stellar groups in the Galactic center's nuclear stellar disk by analyzing proper motions and positions, revealing four co-moving groups around massive stars, including two near the Arches cluster.

Contribution

Introduces a novel algorithm to detect co-moving stellar groups in the Galactic center using five-dimensional data including proper motion and reddening.

Findings

Identified four co-moving groups around massive stars.

Two groups are close to the Arches cluster's orbit.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of the algorithm in a dense stellar environment.

Abstract

During the last $\sim$ 30 Myr the nuclear stellar disk in the Galactic center has been the most prolific star forming region of the Milky Way when averaged by volume. Remarkably, the combined mass of the only three clusters present today in the nuclear stellar disk adds up to only $\sim$10\% of the total expected mass of young stars formed in this period. Several causes could explain this apparent absence of clusters and stellar associations. The stellar density in the area is so high that only the most massive clusters would be detectable against the dense background of stars. The extreme tidal forces reigning in the Galactic center could dissolve even the most massive of the clusters in just a few Myr. Close encounters with one of the massive molecular clouds, that are abundant in the nuclear stellar disk, can also rapidly make any massive cluster or stellar association dissolve beyond recognition. However, traces of some dissolving young clusters/associations could still be detectable as co-moving groups. It is our aim to identify so far unknown clusters or groups of young stars in the Galactic Center. We focus our search on known, spectroscopically identified massive young stars to see whether they can pinpoint such structures. We created an algorithm to detect over-densities in the five-dimensional space spanned by proper-motion, position on the plane of the sky and line-of-sight distances, using reddening as a proxy for the latter. Since co-moving groups must be young in this environment, proper motions provide a good means to search for young stars in the Galactic center. We found four co-moving groups around massive stars, two of which are very close in position and velocity to the Arches' most likely orbit