TY - JOUR
T1 - A wind-blown bubble in the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016
AU - Henshaw, Jonathan D.
AU - Krumholz, Mark R.
AU - Butterfield, Natalie O.
AU - Mackey, Jonathan
AU - Ginsburg, Adam
AU - Haworth, Thomas J.
AU - Nogueras-Lara, Francisco
AU - Barnes, Ashley T.
AU - Longmore, Steven N.
AU - Bally, John
AU - Kruijssen, J. M.Diederik
AU - Mills, Elisabeth A.C.
AU - Beuther, Henrik
AU - Walker, Daniel L.
AU - Battersby, Cara
AU - Bulatek, Alyssa
AU - Henning, Thomas
AU - Ott, Juergen
AU - Soler, Juan D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
PY - 2022/2/1
Y1 - 2022/2/1
N2 - G0.253+0.016, commonly referred to as 'the Brick' and located within the Central Molecular Zone, is one of the densest (≈103-4 cm-3) molecular clouds in the Galaxy to lack signatures of widespread star formation. We set out to constrain the origins of an arc-shaped molecular line emission feature located within the cloud. We determine that the arc, centred on, has a radius of 1.3 pc and kinematics indicative of the presence of a shell expanding at. Extended radio continuum emission fills the arc cavity and recombination line emission peaks at a similar velocity to the arc, implying that the molecular gas and ionized gas are physically related. The inferred Lyman continuum photon rate is NLyC = 1046.0-1047.9 photons s-1, consistent with a star of spectral type B1-O8.5, corresponding to a mass of ≈12-20 M. We explore two scenarios for the origin of the arc: (i) a partial shell swept up by the wind of an interloper high-mass star and (ii) a partial shell swept up by stellar feedback resulting from in situ star formation. We favour the latter scenario, finding reasonable (factor of a few) agreement between its morphology, dynamics, and energetics and those predicted for an expanding bubble driven by the wind from a high-mass star. The immediate implication is that G0.253+0.016 may not be as quiescent as is commonly accepted. We speculate that the cloud may have produced a 103 M star cluster 0.4 Myr ago, and demonstrate that the high-extinction and stellar crowding observed towards G0.253+0.016 may help to obscure such a star cluster from detection.
AB - G0.253+0.016, commonly referred to as 'the Brick' and located within the Central Molecular Zone, is one of the densest (≈103-4 cm-3) molecular clouds in the Galaxy to lack signatures of widespread star formation. We set out to constrain the origins of an arc-shaped molecular line emission feature located within the cloud. We determine that the arc, centred on, has a radius of 1.3 pc and kinematics indicative of the presence of a shell expanding at. Extended radio continuum emission fills the arc cavity and recombination line emission peaks at a similar velocity to the arc, implying that the molecular gas and ionized gas are physically related. The inferred Lyman continuum photon rate is NLyC = 1046.0-1047.9 photons s-1, consistent with a star of spectral type B1-O8.5, corresponding to a mass of ≈12-20 M. We explore two scenarios for the origin of the arc: (i) a partial shell swept up by the wind of an interloper high-mass star and (ii) a partial shell swept up by stellar feedback resulting from in situ star formation. We favour the latter scenario, finding reasonable (factor of a few) agreement between its morphology, dynamics, and energetics and those predicted for an expanding bubble driven by the wind from a high-mass star. The immediate implication is that G0.253+0.016 may not be as quiescent as is commonly accepted. We speculate that the cloud may have produced a 103 M star cluster 0.4 Myr ago, and demonstrate that the high-extinction and stellar crowding observed towards G0.253+0.016 may help to obscure such a star cluster from detection.
KW - Galaxy: centre
KW - H ii regions
KW - ISM: bubbles
KW - ISM: clouds
KW - ISM: kinematics and dynamics
KW - ISM: structure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126816497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stab3039
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stab3039
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 509
SP - 4758
EP - 4774
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 4
ER -