English

A wind-blown bubble in the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-12-22 v1

Abstract

G0.253+0.016, commonly referred to as "the Brick" and located within the Central Molecular Zone, is one of the densest (1034\approx10^{3-4} cm3^{-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 {l0,b0}={0.248,0.18}\{l_{0},b_{0}\}=\{0.248^{\circ}, 0.18^{\circ}\}, has a radius of 1.31.3 pc and kinematics indicative of the presence of a shell expanding at 5.21.9+2.75.2^{+2.7}_{-1.9} km s1^{-1}. Extended radio continuum emission fills the arc cavity and recombination line emission peaks at a similar velocity to the arc, implying that the molecular and ionised gas are physically related. The inferred Lyman continuum photon rate is NLyC=1046.01047.9N_{\rm LyC}=10^{46.0}-10^{47.9} photons s1^{-1}, consistent with a star of spectral type B1-O8.5, corresponding to a mass of 1220\approx12-20 M_{\odot}. 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; 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\lesssim10^{3} M_{\odot} star cluster 0.4\gtrsim0.4 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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.11367,
  title  = {A wind-blown bubble in the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016},
  author = {J. D. Henshaw and M. R. Krumholz and N. O. Butterfield and J. Mackey and A. Ginsburg and T. J. Haworth and F. Nogueras-Lara and A. T. Barnes and S. N. Longmore and J. Bally and J. M. D. Kruijssen and E. A. C. Mills and H. Beuther and D. L. Walker and C. Battersby and A. Bulatek and T. Henning and J. Ott and J. D. Soler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.11367},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS (October 15, 2021)

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:05:08.807Z