Shanghai Astronomical Observatory Astrophysics Colloquium

Title：An ALMA Campaign to Peer into the Central Molecular Zone

Speaker：Dr. Xing Lu (SHAO)

Location: Lecture Hall, 3rd floor

Time：3:00 pm Feb. 23th (Thursday)

Abstract：

The central 500 pc of our Galaxy, known as the ‘Central Molecular Zone’ or CMZ, contains a huge amount of dense molecular gas. Thanks to the extreme physical conditions around the Galactic Center, star formation in the CMZ shows very different characteristics compared to that in the solar neighborhood, for example, about 10 times lower star formation efficiency, and potentially top-heavy initial mass functions. To investigate the origin of the peculiar star formation activities in the CMZ, we have started an ALMA campaign to peer into molecular clouds, dense cores, and accretion disks in the CMZ. I will introduce several of our ongoing ALMA projects investigating (from large to small scales): comprehensive excitation conditions in a cloud, a unique class of slim filaments, magnetic fields in dense cores, and fine structures inside a massive protostellar accretion disk, respectively.

CV：

Xing Lu is an associated researcher at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. He obtained a PhD degree in 2016 at Nanjing University. He also visited Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as an SMA predoctoral fellow in 2012-2015. In 2016-2021, he worked for the ALMA Project at National Astronomical Observatory of Japan as a postdoc fellow. His research focusses on observations of star formation in massive molecular clouds in the Galaxy, by using interferometers such as ALMA, SMA, and JVLA.