ANOMALOUS MICROWAVE EMISSION FROM THE H II REGION RCW175

Abstract

We present evidence for anomalous microwave emission in the RCW175 H II region. Motivated by 33 GHz 13' resolution data from the Very Small Array (VSA), we observed RCW175 at 31 GHz with the Cosmic Background Imager ( CBI) at a resolution of 4'. The region consists of two distinct components, G29.0-0.6 and G29.1-0.7, which are detected at high signal-to-noise ratio. The integrated flux density is 5.97 +/- 0.30 Jy at 31 GHz, in good agreement with the VSA. The 31 GHz flux density is 3.28 +/- 0.38 Jy (8.6s) above the expected value from optically thin free-free emission based on lower frequency radio data and thermal dust constrained by IRAS and WMAP data. Conventional emission mechanisms such as optically thick emission from ultracompact H II regions cannot easily account for this excess. We interpret the excess as evidence for electric dipole emission from small spinning dust grains, which does provide an adequate fit to the data.