We present trigonometric parallax and proper motion measurements toward 22 GHz water and 6.7 GHz methanol masers in 16 high-mass star-forming regions. These sources are all located in the Scutum spiral arm of the Milky Way. The observations were conducted as part of the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) survey. A combination of 14 sources from a forthcoming study and 14 sources from the literature, we now have a sample of 44 sources in the Scutum spiral arm, covering a Galactic longitude range from 0$^circ$ to 33$^circ$. A group of 16 sources shows large peculiar motions of which 13 are oriented toward the inner Galaxy. A likely explanation for these high peculiar motions is the combined gravitational potential of the spiral arm and the Galactic bar.
We report measurements of parallax and proper motion for five 6.7-GHz methanol maser sources in the outer regions of the Perseus arm as part of the BeSSeL Survey of the Galaxy. By combining our results with previous astrometric results, we determine an average spiral arm pitch angle of $9.2pm1.5$ deg and an arm width of 0.39 kpc for this spiral arm. For sources in the interior side of the Perseus arm, we find on average a radial inward motion in the Galaxy of $13.3pm5.4$ km s$^{-1}$ and counter to Galactic rotation of $6.2pm3.2$ km s$^{-1}$. These characteristics are consistent with models for spiral arm formation that involve gas entering an arm to be shocked and then forming stars. However, similar data for other spiral arms do not show similar characteristics.
The Outer Scutum-Centaurus arm (OSC) is the most distant molecular spiral arm known in the Milky Way. The OSC may be the very distant end of the well-known Scutum-Centaurus arm, which stretches from the end of the Galactic bar to the outer Galaxy. At this distance the OSC is seen in the first Galactic quadrant. The population of star formation tracers in the OSC remains largely uncharacterized. Extragalactic studies show a strong correlation between molecular gas and star formation, and carbon monoxide (CO) emission was recently discovered in the OSC. Here we use the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) 12-m telescope to observe the $^{12}$CO J = 1-0 and $^{13}$CO J = 1-0 transitions toward 78 HII region candidates chosen from the WISE Catalog of Galactic HII Regions. These targets are spatially coincident with the Galactic longitude-latitude ($ell, b$) OSC locus as defined by HI emission. We detect CO emission in $sim 80$% of our targets. In total, we detect 117 $^{12}$CO and 40 $^{13}$CO emission lines. About 2/3 of our targets have at least one emission line originating beyond the Solar orbit. Most of the detections beyond the Solar orbit are associated with the Outer Arm, but there are 17 $^{12}$CO emission lines and 8 $^{13}$CO emission lines with LSR velocities that are consistent with the velocities of the OSC. There is no apparent difference between the physical properties (e.g., molecular column density) of these OSC molecular clouds and non--OSC molecular clouds within our sample.
HIFI GOT C+ Galactic plane [CII] spectral survey has detected strong emission at the spiral arm tangencies. We use the unique viewing geometry of the Scutum-Crux (S-C) tangency near i = 30degs to detect the warm ionized medium (WIM) component traced by [CII] and to study the effects of spiral density waves on Interstellar Medium (ISM) gas. We compare [CII] velocity features with ancillary HI, 12CO and 13CO data near tangent velocities at each longitude to separate the cold neutral medium and the warm neutral + ionized components in the S-C tangency, then we identify [CII] emission at the highest velocities without any contribution from 12CO clouds, as WIM. We present the GOT C+ results for the S-C tangency. We interpret the diffuse and extended excess [CII] emission at and above the tangent velocities as arising in the electron-dominated warm ionized gas in the WIM. We derive an electron density in the range of 0.2 - 0.9 cm^-3 at each longitude, a factor of several higher than the average value from Halpha and pulsar dispersion. We interpret the excess [CII] in S-C tangency as shock compression of the WIM induced by the spiral density waves.
Molecular line images of 13CO, C18O, CN, CS, CH3OH, and HNCO are obtained toward the spiral arm of M51 at a 7 times 6 resolution with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). Distributions of the molecules averaged over a 300 pc scale are found to be almost similar to one another and to essentially trace the spiral arm. However, the principal component analysis shows a slight difference of distributions among molecular species particularly for CH3OH and HNCO. These two species do not correlate well with star-formation rate, implying that they are not enhanced by local star-formation activities but by galactic-scale phenomena such as spiral shocks. Furthermore, the distribution of HNCO and CH3OH are found to be slightly different, whose origin deserves further investigation. The present results provide us with an important clue to understanding the 300 pc scale chemical composition in the spiral arm and its relation to galactic-scale dynamics.
Fragmentation of a spiral arm is thought to drive the formation of giant clumps in galaxies. Using linear perturbation analysis for self-gravitating spiral arms, we derive an instability parameter and define the conditions for clump formation. We extend our analysis to multi-component systems that consist of gas and stars in an external potential. We then perform numerical simulations of isolated disc galaxies with isothermal gas, and compare the results with the prediction of our analytic model. Our model describes accurately the evolution of the spiral arms in our simulations, even when spiral arms dynamically interact with one another. We show that most of the giant clumps formed in the simulated disc galaxies satisfy the instability condition. The clump masses predicted by our model are in agreement with the simulation results, but the growth time-scale of unstable perturbations is overestimated by a factor of a few. We also apply our instability analysis to derive scaling relations of clump properties. The expected scaling relation between the clump size, velocity dispersion, and circular velocity is slightly different from that given by the Toomre instability analysis, but neither is inconsistent with currently available observations. We argue that the spiral-arm instability is a viable formation mechanism of giant clumps in gas-rich disc galaxies.