ACES: The Magnetic Field in Large Filaments in the Galactic Center
Journal article, 2026
The Galactic center (GC) is an extreme region of the Milky Way that is host to a complex set of thermal and nonthermal structures. In particular, the GC contains high-density gas and dust that is collectively referred to as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). In this work, we study a subset of HNCO filaments identified in Band 3 Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of the GC obtained by the ALMA CMZ Exploration Survey that are comparable to high-density filaments identified in the Galactic disk. We compare the orientation of the magnetic field derived from 214 mu m Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy and 850 mu m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observations with the filament orientation to determine which mechanisms dominate the formation of these filaments. We observe a large range of magnetic orientations in our observed filaments indicating the complex environments the filaments are located in. We also compare the observational results to synthetic datasets created using an MHD model of the GC. Our analysis reveals that the dominant mechanisms local to the HNCO filaments vary throughout the GC with some filaments being dominated by supersonic turbulence and others by subsonic turbulence. The comparison to synthetic observations indicates that the observed filaments are in magnetically dominated environments that could be supporting these filaments against collapse. Our results on the CMZ filaments are also compared to results obtained on similar filaments located in the Galactic disk, and we find that the filaments studied here are possible CMZ analogs to the dense filamentary "bones" observed previously in the Galactic disk.
Author
Dylan M. Pare
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA)
Zi-Xuan Feng
University of Insubria
Yue Hu
Princeton University
Maya Petkova
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
Jack Sullivan
University of Connecticut
Robin G. Tress
Institute of Physics Bhubaneswar
Cara Battersby
University of Connecticut
Janik Karoly
University College London (UCL)
Alex Lazarian
University of Wisconsin Madison
Dani Lipman
University of Connecticut
Xing Pan
Nanjing University
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Marco Donati
University of Insubria
Mattia C. Sormani
University of Insubria
John Bally
University of Colorado
Ashley T. Barnes
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Natalie O. Butterfield
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Laura Colzi
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Christoph Federrath
Australian National University
Pablo Garcia
Universidad Catolica del Norte
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Adam Ginsburg
Univ Florida, Dept Astron, 211 Bryant Space Sci Ctr, POB 112055
Savannah R. Gramze
University of Florida
Anika Schmiedeke
Green Bank Observatory
Christian Henkel
Max Planck Society
Jonathan D. Henshaw
Max Planck Society
Liverpool John Moores University
Paul T. Ho
East Asian Observatory
Academia Sinica
Pei-Ying Hsieh
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Izaskun Jimenez-Serra
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Ralf S. Klessen
Heidelberg University
Jennifer Wallace
University of Connecticut
Qizhou Zhang
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Astrophysical Journal
0004-637X (ISSN) 1538-4357 (eISSN)
Vol. 1000 1 37Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Condensed Matter Physics
Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics
Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Cosmology
DOI
10.3847/1538-4357/ae22ce