Dense Molecular Clouds In The Galactic Center Region : I. HCN (J=1$-$0) DATA

Abstract

The Galactic Center regions $-6^\circ \le l \le 6^\circ$ and $-0.8^\circ \le b \le 0.87^\circ$ are surveyed with HCN J=1$-$0 line (88.6 GHz) on a 4$'$ grid with the 14 m telescope at the Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory. The data complement the previous $^{13}$CO, CS, and H$_2$CO measurements (Bally \etal 1988, Zylka \etal 1992) but cover a wider area with a better or comparable resolution. The asymmetry in emission found in the $^{13}$CO observations by Bally \etal (1988) is well confirmed in this study. Interestingly, the asymmetry in HCN emission is more pronounced here: more than $80 \%$ of the overall emission is found in the first quadrant ($l>0$) and $V_{LSR}>0$. Also confirmed is the existence of several emission components in the regions forbidden by the Galactic circular rotation. The HCN maps show clear absence of both more outer galactic emissions and the 3 kpc arm component, which are both visible in the $^{13}$CO map. This implies that the HCN emission lines are not contaminated by foreground or background gas components. Therefore HCN data are particularly useful in investigating the structures of molecular clouds in the Galactic Center. The $\Delta V$s (FWHMs) of the most of the detected lines are found to be very large, \ie, about $15\sim $55 km s$^{-1}$ with the mode at $\Delta V \approx25$ km s$^{-1}$. The typical value of $\Delta V\approx 25$ km s$^{-1}$ may imply that clouds with mass of an order of $10^6 \msun$ are common in the GC region. Another trend found is that the maximum ${\Delta}V$ decreases with $l$, which may be partly due to the overlapping effects of clouds.