Edmund Hodges-Kluck's Research

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.


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.