ACES: The Magnetic Field in Large Filaments in the Galactic Center
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 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.

Författare

Dylan M. Pare

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA)

Zi-Xuan Feng

Universita degli Studi dell'Insubria

Yue Hu

Princeton University

Maya Petkova

Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Astronomi och plasmafysik

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

Universita degli Studi dell'Insubria

Mattia C. Sormani

Universita degli Studi dell'Insubria

John Bally

University of Colorado

Ashley T. Barnes

European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Natalie O. Butterfield

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Laura Colzi

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (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-Gesellschaft

Jonathan D. Henshaw

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Liverpool John Moores University

Paul T. Ho

East Asian Observatory

Academia Sinica

Pei-Ying Hsieh

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Izaskun Jimenez-Serra

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)

Ralf S. Klessen

Universität Heidelberg

Jennifer Wallace

University of Connecticut

Qizhou Zhang

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Astrophysical Journal

0004-637X (ISSN) 1538-4357 (eISSN)

Vol. 1000 1 37

Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2025)

Den kondenserade materiens fysik

Fusion, plasma och rymdfysik

Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi

DOI

10.3847/1538-4357/ae22ce

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2026-03-27