Kavli Affiliate: Luis C. Ho
| First 5 Authors: H Perry Hatchfield, Cara Battersby, Ashley T. Barnes, Natalie Butterfield, Adam Ginsburg
| Summary:
In this work, we constrain the star-forming properties of all possible sites
of incipient high-mass star formation in the Milky Way’s Galactic Center. We
identify dense structures using the CMZoom 1.3mm dust continuum catalog of
objects with typical radii of $sim$0.1pc, and measure their association with
tracers of high-mass star formation. We incorporate compact emission at 8, 21,
24, 25, and 70um from MSX, Spitzer, Herschel, and SOFIA, catalogued young
stellar objects, and water and methanol masers to characterize each source. We
find an incipient star formation rate (SFR) for the CMZ of ~0.08 Msun yr^{-1}
over the next few 10^5 yr. We calculate upper and lower limits on the CMZ’s
incipient SFR of ~0.45 Msun yr^{-1} and ~0.05 Msun yr^{-1} respectively,
spanning between roughly equal to and several times greater than other
estimates of CMZ’s recent SFR. Despite substantial uncertainties, our results
suggest the incipient SFR in the CMZ may be higher than previously estimated.
We find that the prevalence of star formation tracers does not correlate with
source volume density, but instead ~75% of high-mass star formation is found in
regions above a column density ratio (N_{SMA}/N_{Herschel}) of ~1.5. Finally,
we highlight the detection of “atoll sources”, a reoccurring morphology of
cold dust encircling evolved infrared sources, possibly representing HII
regions in the process of destroying their envelopes.
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