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A Census of Early Phase High-Mass Star Formation in the Central Molecular Zone

Lu, X, Mills, EAC, Ginsburg, A, Walker, D, Barnes, A, Butterfield, N, Henshaw, J, Battersby, C, Kruijssen, JMD, Longmore, SN, Zhang, Q, Bally, J, Kauffmann, J, Ott, J, Rickert, M and Wang, K (2019) A Census of Early Phase High-Mass Star Formation in the Central Molecular Zone. Astrophysical Journal, 244 (2). ISSN 0004-637X

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Abstract

We present new observations of C-band continuum emission and masers to assess high-mass ($>$8 $M_\odot$) star formation at early evolutionary phases in the inner 200 pc of the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Galaxy. The continuum observation is complete to free-free emission from stars above 10-11 $M_\odot$ in 91% of the covered area. We identify 104 compact sources in the continuum emission, among which five are confirmed ultracompact H II regions, 12 are candidates of ultra-compact H II regions, and the remaining 87 sources are mostly massive stars in clusters, field stars, evolved stars, pulsars, extragalactic sources, or of unknown nature that is to be investigated. We detect class II CH$_3$OH masers at 23 positions, among which six are new detections. We confirm six known H$_2$CO masers in two high-mass star forming regions, and detect two new H$_2$CO masers toward the Sgr C cloud, making it the ninth region in the Galaxy that contains masers of this type. In spite of these detections, we find that current high-mass star formation in the inner CMZ is only taking place in seven isolated clouds. The results suggest that star formation at early evolutionary phases in the CMZ is about 10 times less efficient than expected by the dense gas star formation relation, which is in line with previous studies that focus on more evolved phases of star formation. This means that if there will be any impending, next burst of star formation in the CMZ, it has not yet begun.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: astro-ph.GA; astro-ph.GA
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions: Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher: American Astronomical Society; IOP Publishing
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2019 10:56
Last Modified: 04 Sep 2021 08:53
DOI or ID number: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab4258
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11336
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