A High-Resolution Survey of HI Absorption toward the Central 200 pc of
  the Galactic Center
  We present an HI absorption survey of the central 250 pc of the Galaxy. Very
Large Array (VLA) observations were made at 21 cm in the DnC and CnB
configurations and have a resolution of ~15"(0.6 pc at the Galactic Center (GC)
distance) and a velocity resolution of ~2.5 km/s. This study provides HI data
with high spatial resolution, comparable with the many high resolution
observations which have been made of GC sources over the past ten years. Here
we present an overview of the HI absorption toward ~40 well-known continuum
sources and a detailed comparison of the ionized, atomic and molecular
components of the interstellar medium for the Sgr B, Radio Arc and Sgr C
regions. In these well-known regions, the atomic gas appears to be closely
correlated in both velocity and distribution to the ionized and molecular gas,
indicating that it resides in photo-dissociation regions related to the HII
regions in the GC. Toward the majority of the radio continuum sources, HI
absorption by the 3-kpc arm is detected, constraining these sources to lie
beyond a 5 kpc distance in the Galaxy.
