The origin of large peculiar motions of star-forming regions and spiral structures of our Galaxy

Abstract

Recent VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometer) observations determined the distances and proper motions of star-forming regions in spiral arms directly. They showed that star-forming regions and young stars have large peculiar motions, as large as 30 km/s with complex structures. Such a large peculiar motion is incompatible with the prediction of the standard theory of quasi-stationary spiral arms. We use a high-resolution, self-consistent N-body+hydrodynamical simulation to explore how the spiral arms are formed and maintained, and how star-forming regions move. We found that arms are not quasi-stationary but transient and recurrent, as suggested in alternative theories of spiral structures. Because of this transient nature of the spiral arms, star-forming regions exhibit a trend of large and complex non-circular motions, which is qualitatively consistent with the VLBI observations. Owing to this large non-circular motion, a kinematically estimated gas map of our Galaxy has a large systematic errors of ~2-3 kpc in the distance from the Sun.