I am currently studying the formation of Galactic center molecular clouds in millimeter/submillimeter lines of CO, HCN, and HCO+. The goal is to better understand how (or if) the Galactic bar drives the formation of molecular clouds from disk atomic gas from an observational perspective.

ADS Listing for past 5 years

Carma Research
Working with Prof. Andrew Harris and Dr. Marc Pound, I have been using maps of molecular clouds near the Galactic center made with CARMA in HCO+/HCN to study the region around the X-ray source 1E 1740.7-2942, the so-called Great Annihilator. The X-ray source is likely a low-mass X-ray binary with a black hole, but along the same line of sight is an excited molecular cloud, visible in CO J=6-5. Nearby, we see several other molecular clouds at different LSR velocities, temperatures, and with different internal structure. A large number of shocked molecular clouds in this region would lend credence to the theory propounded by Binney et al. (1991) that the resonances of the Galactic bar play a part in funneling atomic gas from the disk into the Galactic center region as molecular gas.

HCO+/HCN (1-0) contour maps of combined D (37-point mosaic) and E-Array (7-point mosaic) CARMA data towards 1E 1740.7-2942. Solid contours have levels of 9, 12, 15, 18, 24, 36, and 48 Jy/beam and 2-contour feature is about a 3-sigma detection. The maps have been integrated from -90 to -190 km/s LSR velocity. Clouds of interest have been indicated.

The spectra associated with the labeled regions in the HCN/HCO+ maps.