[astro-ph.GA] The mass flows and energy cycles within the inner regions of galaxies exert a powerful influence on the evolution of the galaxy population.
The centre of the Milky Way is the only galactic nucleus for which it is possible to resolve the physical mechanisms that drive these cycles, namely star formation and feedback, while also tracing global (>100 pc) processes which determine where and when star formation and feedback occur.
We present an overview of ACES, the ‘Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) CMZ Exploration Survey’, a ~1.5″ angular resolution, 0.2-3 km/s spectral resolution ALMA Band 3 (85-102 GHz), survey of the ‘Central Molecular Zone’ (CMZ) — the inner-100 pc of the Galaxy (l = 359.4 deg to 0.8 deg).
ACES spectral setup is tuned to observe optimal tracers of the physical, chemical, and kinematic conditions in over 70 spectral features (e.g. HCO+, HNCO, SiO, H40alpha, complex molecules) of the gas in the CMZ, to derive the properties of all potentially star-forming Galactic Centre gas, from global scales (100 pc) to dense ~0.05 pc structures that are expected to host individual star-forming cores, down to sub-sonic (<0.4 km/s) velocity resolution.
In this overview paper, we provide the scientific justification for the ACES survey, explain the choice of observational setup, and describe the data legacy products. Finally, we show some of the initial ACES data which highlight the power of ACES’ combination of high angular resolution, unprecedented spatial dynamic range, sensitivity, spectral resolution and spectral bandwidth as an illustration of how ACES aims to understand how global processes set the location, intensity, and timescales for star formation and feedback in the CMZ.
Finding chart for the Galactic Center region. A colour composite of the 4.5 𝜇m (white) and 8 𝜇m (green) emission from the Spitzer GLIMPSE survey (Churchwell et al. 2009), 24 𝜇m (yellow) emission from the Spitzer MIPSGAL survey (Carey et al. 2009), and 20 cm (red) emission observed by MeerKAT (Heywood et al. 2019, 2022) and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT; Law et al. 2008). Overlaid are labels highlighting several features of interest across the Galactic Centre, including the central few 100 pc known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). Overlaid as a white contour is the coverage of the ACES survey (see Figure 2). The inset zoom-in shows the ACES HNCO(1-0) peak intensity map. Figure 2 shows the coordinates for the inset image. The background image for this Figure is adapted from Henshaw et al. 2023. An interactive version of the figure is available on the project homepage, https://sites.google.com/view/aces-cmz/home. — [astro-ph.GA]
Steven N. Longmore, John Bally, Ashley T. Barnes, Cara Battersby, Laura Colzi, Adam Ginsburg, Jonathan D. Henshaw, Paul T. P. Ho, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, J. M. Diederik Kruijssen, Elisabeth A.C. Mills, Maya A. Petkova, Mattia C. Sormani, Robin G. Tress, Daniel L. Walker, Jennifer Wallace, Emad Alkhuja, Lucia Armillotta, Nazar Budaiev, Rojita Buddhacharya, Alyssa Bulatek, Michael Burton, Natalie O. Butterfield, Laura A. Busch, Paola Caselli, Mélanie Chevance, Claire Cook, Samuel Crowe, Ana Karla Díaz-Rodríguez, Enrico DiTeodoro, Simon R. Dicker, Katarzyna M. Dutkowska, Adam Fairley, Christoph Federrath, Rubén Fedriani, Zi-Xuan Feng, Karl Fiteni, Gary Fuller, Pablo García, Javier Goicoechea, Philipp Girichidis, Simon C. O. Glover, Mark Gorski, Savannah R. Gramze, Qi-Lao Gu, H. Perry Hatchfield, Christian Henkel, Rebecca J. Houghton, Pei-Ying Hsieh, Yue Hu, Katharina Immer, Desmond Jeff, Janik Karoly, Jens Kauffmann, Ralf S. Klessen, Mark R. Krumholz, Alex Lazarian, Emily M. Levesque, Fu-Heng Liang, Dani Lipman, Xunchuan Liu, Xing Lu, Qiu-yi Luo, Alessandro Lupi, Laura McCafferty, S. Martín, Farideh Mazoochi, Mark R. Morris, Marie Nonhebel, Francisco Nogueras-Lara, Tomoharu Oka, Juergen Ott, Marco Padovani, Xing Pan, Jaime E. Pineda, Thushara G.S. Pillai, Marc W. Pound, Miguel Requena Torres, Denise Riquelme-Vásquez, Víctor M. Rivilla, Galaxy Salo, Álvaro Sánchez-Monge, Miriam G. Santa-Maria, Rainer Schoedel, Anika Schmiedeke, Matthias Schultheis, Howard A. Smith, Yoshiaki Sofue, Leonardo Testi, Grant R. Tremblay, Arianna Vasini, Gijs Vermariën, Alexey Vikhlinin, Serena Viti, Q. Daniel Wang, Fengwei Xu, Suinan Zhang, Qizhou Zhang
Comments: Accepted to MNRAS. Website is https://sites.google.com/view/aces-cmz/home and data release is linked from there. Pipeline code is at https://github.com/ACES-CMZ/reduction_ACES/releases/tag/2026-02-18
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2602.20340 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2602.20340v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.20340
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From: Steven Longmore N
[v1] Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:38:16 UTC (23,037 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20340
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,
