Abstract
We acquired 450 and 850 μm dust continuum polarization observations toward the inner region of the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) as part of the B-Fields In Star-forming Region Observations survey using the POL-2 polarimeter on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. These observations encompassed three dense structures: the 20 km s−1 cloud (20MC), 50 km s−1 cloud (50MC), and circumnuclear disk (CND). Our aim is to investigate the magnetic field morphology and strength in the inner region of the CMZ using polarized dust continuum and the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method. The magnetic field morphology is highly ordered in all three dense regions. The plane-of-sky magnetic field strengths are ∼1 mG for the 20MC and the 50MC, and ∼2 mG for the CND. We compare the energy contributions of turbulence, gravity, and thermal motion with that of the magnetic field using the plasma β, mass-to-flux ratio, and Alfvén Mach number. The outcomes reveal the magnetic field stands out as the predominant factor within the inner region of the CMZ. The dominance of the magnetic field may explain the low star-forming rate in the CMZ. We further investigate the dust grain alignment efficiency by exploring the relationship between polarization fraction and total intensity. The results suggest that dust grains are well aligned with the magnetic fields.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 184 |
| Journal | The Astrophysical Journal |
| Volume | 983 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 18 Apr 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 20 Apr 2025 |
Funding
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics; the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; the Operation, Maintenance and Upgrading Fund for Astronomical Telescopes and Facility Instruments, funded by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) of China and administrated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as well as the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFA0402700). Additional funding support is provided by the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom and participating universities in the United Kingdom and Canada. Funding for the construction of SCUBA-2 and POL-2 was provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The Starlink software (H. S. Thomas & M. J. Currie 2014) is supported by the East Asian Observatory, JCMT Project Code M16AL004. This research used the facilities of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre operated by the National Research Council of Canada with the support of the Canadian Space Agency. This research utilized the NASA Astrophysics Data System. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are privileged to conduct observations from this mountain. We thank the anonymous referee for the thoughtful comments and suggestions, which have helped improve this manuscript. The data used in this paper were obtained under project codes M20AL018, M17AP074. M.Z.Y. and S.P.L. acknowledge grants from the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of Taiwan 109-2112-M-007-010-MY3 and 112-2112-M-007-011. This work used high-performance computing facilities operated by the Center for Informatics and Computation in Astronomy (CICA) at National Tsing Hua University. This equipment was funded by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan, the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan, and National Tsing Hua University. F.P. acknowledges support from the MICINN under grant No. PID2022-141915NB-C21. M.T. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant No. 24H00242. J.K. (Jungmi Kwon) is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant No. 24K07086. W.K. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT; RS-2024-00342488). K.P. is a Royal Society University Research Fellow, supported by grant No. URF\R1\211322. X.L. acknowledges support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2022YFA1603101), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) grant No. XDB0800300, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) through grant Nos. 12273090 and 12322305, the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 23ZR1482100), and the CAS "Light of West China" Program No. xbzg-zdsys-202212. J.K. is supported by the Royal Society under grant No. RF\ERE\231132, as part of project URF\R1\211322. K.Q. acknowledges National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant Nos. 12425304 and U1731237, and the National Key R&D Program of China with Nos. 2023YFA1608204 and 2022YFA1603103. C.W.L. acknowledges support from the Basic Science Research Program through the NRF funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (NRF- 2019R1A2C1010851) and from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT; project No. 2024-1-841-00). L.F. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under grant No. 111-2112-M-005-018-MY3. E.S. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Grant No. 11988101, and by the Alliance of International Science Organizations (ANSO), Grant No. ANSO-VF-2021-01.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science