Abstract : Planck data when combined with ancillary data provide a unique opportunity to separate the diffuse emission components of the inner Galaxy. The purpose of the paper is to elucidate the morphology of the various emission components in the strong star-formation region lying inside the solar radius and to clarify the relationship between the various components. The region of the Galactic plane covered is l = 300° → 0° →
60° wherestar-formation is highest and the emission is strong enough to make meaningful component separation. The latitude widths in this longitude range lie between 1° and 2°, which correspond to FWHM
z-widths of 100−200 pc at a typical
distance of 6 kpc. The four emission components studied here are synchrotron, free-free,
anomalous microwave emission (AME), and thermal (vibrational) dust emission. These
components are identified by constructing spectral energy distributions (SEDs) at
positions along the Galactic plane using the wide frequency coverage of
Planck (28.4−857 GHz) in combination with low-frequency radio data at
0.408−2.3 GHz plus WMAP data
at 23−94 GHz, along with
far-infrared (FIR) data from COBE-DIRBE and IRAS. The free-free component is determined
from radio recombination line (RRL) data. AME is found to be comparable in brightness to
the free-free emission on the Galactic plane in the frequency range 20−40 GHz with a width in latitude similar to
that of the thermal dust; it comprises 45 ±
1% of the total 28.4 GHz emission in the longitude range
l = 300° → 0° →
60°. The free-free component is the narrowest, reflecting the fact that
it is produced by current star-formation as traced by the narrow distribution of OB stars.
It is the dominant emission on the plane between 60 and 100 GHz. RRLs from this ionized
gas are used to assess its distance, leading to a free-free z-width of FWHM
≈ 100 pc. The
narrow synchrotron component has a low-frequency brightness spectral index βsynch ≈ −2.7
that is similar to the broad synchrotron component indicating that they are both populated
by the cosmic ray electrons of the same spectral index. The width of this narrow
synchrotron component is significantly larger than that of the other three components,
suggesting that it is generated in an assembly of older supernova remnants that have
expanded to sizes of order 150 pc in 3 ×
105 yr; pulsars of a similar age have a similar spread in
latitude. The thermal dust is identified in the SEDs with average parameters of
Tdust = 20.4 ±
0.4 K, βFIR = 1.94 ± 0.03 (> 353 GHz), and βmm = 1.67 ±
0.02 (<
353 GHz). The latitude distributions of gamma-rays, CO, and the
emission in high-frequency Planck bands have similar widths, showing that
they are all indicators of the total gaseous matter on the plane in the inner Galaxy.
