DENSE MOLECULAR CLOUDS IN THE GALACTIC CENTER REGION II. H13CN (J=1-0) DATA AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF THE CLOUDS

Abstract

We present results of a <TEX>$H^{13}CN$</TEX> J=1-0 mapping survey of molecular clouds toward the Galactic Center (GC) region of <TEX>$-1.6^{\circ}{\le}{\iota}{\le}2^{\circ}$</TEX> and <TEX>$-0.23^{\circ}{\le}b{\le}0.30^{\circ}$</TEX> with 2' grid resolution. The <TEX>$H^{13}CN$</TEX> emissions show similar distribution and velocity structures to those of the <TEX>$H^{12}CN$</TEX> emissions, but are found to better trace the feature saturated with <TEX>$H^{12}CN$</TEX> (1-0). The bright components among multi-components of <TEX>$H^{12}CN$</TEX> line profiles usually appear in the <TEX>$H^{13}CN$</TEX> line while most of the dynamically forbidden, weak <TEX>$H^{12}CN$</TEX> components are seldom detected in the <TEX>$H^{13}CN$</TEX> line. We also present results of other complementary observations in <TEX>$^{12}CO$</TEX> (J=1-0) and <TEX>$^{13}CO$</TEX> (J=1-0) lines to estimate physical quantities of the GC clouds, such as fractional abundance of HCN isotopes and mass of the GC cloud complexes. We confirm that the GC has very rich chemistry. The overall fractional abundance of <TEX>$H^{12}CN$</TEX> and <TEX>$H^{13}CN$</TEX> relative to <TEX>$H_2$</TEX> in the GC region is found to be significantly higher than those of any other regions, such as star forming region and dark cloud. Especially cloud complexes nearer to the GC tend to have various higher abundance of HCN. Total mass of the HCN molecular clouds within <TEX>$[{\iota}]{\le}6^{\circ}$</TEX> is estimated to be <TEX>${\~}2 {\times}10^7\;M_{\bigodot}$</TEX> using the abundances of HCN isotopes, which is fairly consistent with previous other estimates. Masses of four main complexes in the GC range from a few <TEX>$10^5$</TEX> to <TEX>${\~}10^7\;M_{\bigodot}$</TEX> All the HCN spectra with multi-components for the four main cloud complexes were investigated to compare the line widths of the complexes. The largest mode (45 km <TEX>$s^{-1}$</TEX>) of the FWHM distributions among the complexes is in the Clump 2. The value of the mode tends to be smaller at the farther complexes from the GC.