Large-scale filaments associated with Milky Way spiral arms

Abstract

The ubiquity of filamentary structure at various scales through out the Galaxy has triggered a renewed interest in their formation, evolution, and role in star formation. The largest filaments can reach up to Galactic scale as part of the spiral arm structure. However, such large scale filaments are hard to identify systematically due to limitations in identifying methodology (i.e., as extinction features). We present a new approach to directly search for the largest, coldest, and densest filaments in the Galaxy, making use of sensitive Herschel Hi-GAL data complemented by spectral line cubes. We present a sample of the 9 most prominent Herschel filaments, including 6 identified from a pilot search field plus 3 from outside the field. These filaments measure 37-99 pc long and 0.6-3.0 pc wide with masses (0.5-8.3)$\times 10^4{M}_{\odot }$, and beam-averaged ($28"$, or 0.4-0.7 pc) peak H${}_2$ column densities of (1.7-9.3)$\times 10^{22}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$. The bulk of the filaments are relatively cold (17-21 K), while some local clumps have a dust temperature up to 25-47 K. All the filaments are located within <~60 pc from the Galactic mid-plane. Comparing the filaments to a recent spiral arm model incorporating the latest parallax measurements, we find that 7/9 of them reside within arms, but most are close to arm edges. These filaments are comparable in length to the Galactic scale height and therefore are not simply part of a grander turbulent cascade.

Published 2015MNRAS.450.4043W; this version contains minor proof corrections. FT-based background removal code at https://github.com/esoPanda/FTbg SED fitting code at http://hi-gal-sed-fitter.readthedocs.org 3D interactive visualization at http://www.eso.org/~kwang

References in corpus (10)

• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star Forming Regions: VI. Galactic Structure, Fundamental Parameters and Non-Circular Motions
• The Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey
• MAMBO Mapping of Spitzer c2d Small Clouds and Cores
• Filamentary structure of star-forming complexes
• CO-dark gas and molecular filaments in Milky Way type galaxies
• The Bones of the Milky Way
• The identification of filaments on far infrared and submillimiter images. Morphology, physical conditions and relation with star formation of filamentary structure
• The Interstellar Medium and star formation on kpc size scales
• The dense gas mass fraction in the W51 cloud and its protoclusters
• The onset of large scale turbulence in the interstellar medium of spiral galaxies

Cited by in corpus (68)

• ATLASGAL --- properties of a complete sample of Galactic clumps
• The link between turbulence, magnetic fields, filaments, and star formation in the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016
• High-mass Star Formation through Filamentary Collapse and Clump-fed Accretion in G22
• Dust polarized emission observations of NGC 6334; BISTRO reveals the details of the complex but organized magnetic field structure of the high-mass star-forming hub-filament network
• The Hi-GAL catalogue of dusty filamentary structures in the Galactic Plane
• A Census of Large-Scale ($\ge$ 10 pc), Velocity-Coherent, Dense Filaments in the Northern Galactic Plane: Automated Identification Using Minimum Spanning Tree
• From diffuse gas to dense molecular cloud cores
• ATOMS: ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions -- XV. Steady Accretion from Global Collapse to Core Feeding in Massive Hub-filament System SDC335
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disk
• Thermal Feedback in the high-mass star and cluster forming region W51
• The SEDIGISM survey: Molecular clouds in the inner Galaxy
• Interstellar filaments and star formation
• The evolution of Giant Molecular Filaments
• Temperature structure and kinematics of the IRDC G035.39-00.33
• Cloud formation in the atomic and molecular phase: HI self absorption (HISA) towards a Giant Molecular Filament
• ALMA observations reveal no preferred outflow--filament and outflow--magnetic field orientations
• PHANGS--JWST First Results: ISM structure on the turbulent Jeans scale in four disk galaxies observed by JWST and ALMA
• ALMA observations of NGC 6334S. II. Subsonic and Transonic Narrow Filaments in a High-mass Star Formation Cloud
• Edge collapse and subsequent longitudinal accretion in Filament S242
• Autonomous Gaussian decomposition of the Galactic Ring Survey. I. Global statistics and properties of the 13CO emission data
• A Morphological Classification of 18190 Molecular Clouds Identified in ${}^{12}$CO Data from the MWISP Survey
• Fraction of Clumpy Star-Forming Galaxies at $0.5\le z\le 3$ in UVCANDELS: Dependence on Stellar Mass and Environment
• The SEDIGISM survey: The influence of spiral arms on the molecular gas distribution of the inner Milky Way
• Kinematics of the molecular interstellar medium probed by Gaia: steep velocity dispersion-size relation, isotropic turbulence, and location-dependent energy dissipation
• A multi-wavelength observation and investigation of six infrared dark clouds
• Kinematics and star formation toward W33: a central hub as a hub--filament system
• Gas kinematics and star formation in the filamentary molecular cloud G47.06+0.26
• OGHReS: Large-scale filaments in the outer Galaxy
• Synthetic Large-Scale Galactic Filaments -- on their Formation, Physical Properties, and Resemblance to Observations
• Discovery of a coherent, wave-like velocity pattern for the Radcliffe Wave
• Revealing a spiral-shaped molecular cloud in our galaxy - Cloud fragmentation under rotation and gravity
• Search for grain growth towards the center of L1544
• The Magnetic Field in the Milky Way Filamentary Bone G47
• A Kpc Scale Molecular Wave in the Inner Galaxy: Feather of the Milky Way?
• The SEDIGISM survey: Molecular cloud morphology. I. Classification and star formation
• Large-scale Velocity-coherent Filaments in the SEDIGISM Survey: Association with Spiral Arms and Fraction of Dense Gas
• Disconnecting the Dots: Re-Examining the Nature of Stellar "Strings" in the Milky Way
• Gravitational collapse and accretion flows in the hub filament system G323.46-0.08
• Probing the massive star forming environment - a multiwavelength investigation of the filamentary IRDC G333.73+0.37
• The "Maggie" filament: Physical properties of a giant atomic cloud
• The Milky Way Atlas for Linear Filaments
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds in the southern sky
• Kinematics and star formation of hub-filament systems in W49A
• Extended HNCO, SiO, and HC${}_3$N emission in 43 southern star-forming regions
• Weather Forecast of the Milky Way: Shear and Stellar feedback determine the lives of Galactic-scale filaments
• The filamentary structures in the CO emission toward the Milky Way disk
• The discovery of the largest gas filament in our Galaxy, or a new spiral arm?
• Characterization of dense Planck clumps observed with Herschel and SCUBA-2
• Chemical evolution of N2H+ in six massive star-forming regions
• Nobeyama 45 m Local Spur CO survey. I. Giant molecular filaments and cluster formation in the Vulpecula OB association
• A Herschel study of G214.5-1.8: a young, cold and quiescent giant molecular filament on the shell of a HI superbubble
• A Cold and Diffuse Giant Molecular Filament in the Region of $l=41^{\circ }$, $b=-1^{\circ }$
• Formation of Galactic Prominence in Galactic Central Region
• The Cassiopeia Filament: A Blown Spur of the Local Arm
• Dust emission, extinction, and scattering in LDN 1642
• Filamentary Hierarchies and Superbubbles I: Characterizing filament properties across a simulated spiral galaxy
• Cloud-cloud collision and star formation in G323.18+0.15
• Chemical Evolution of HC3N in Dense Molecular Clouds
• A Comprehensive All-Sky Catalog of 3345 Molecular Clouds from Three-dimensional Dust Extinction
• Different molecular filament widths as tracers of accretion onto filaments
• A systematic bias in fitting the surface-density profiles of interstellar filaments
• Symmetry properties and widths of the filamentary structures in the Orion A giant molecular cloud
• Sequential Star Formation in the filamentary structures of Planck Galactic cold clump G181.84+0.31
• Molecular Clouds Associated with {H \small{II}} regions and Candidates within l = 106.65${}^{\circ }$ to 109.50${}^{\circ }$ and b = $-$1.85${}^{\circ }$ to 0.95${}^{\circ }$
• The Milky Way atlas for linear filaments II. clump rotation versus filament orientation
• The Impact of Expanding HII Regions on Filament G37:Curved Magnetic Field and Multiple Direction Material Flows
• Revealing the Connection Between the Filamentary Hierarchy and Star Cluster Formation in a Simulated NGC 628 Galaxy
• Quantifying the anisotropic density structure of the Central Molecular Zone -- a 2D correlation function approach