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Register a new userALMA $^{12}$CO (J=1--0) imaging of the nearby galaxy M83: Variations in the efficiency of star formation in giant molecular clouds
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We present results of the $^{12}$CO (1--0) mosaic observations of the nearby barred-spiral galaxy M83 obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The total flux is recovered by combining the ALMA data with single-dish data obtained using the Nobeyama 45-m telescope. The combined map covers a $sim$13 kpc$^{2}$ field that includes the galactic center, eastern bar, and spiral arm with a resolution of timeform{2.03} $times$ timeform{1.1} ($sim$45 pc $times$ $sim$25 pc). With a resolution comparable to typical sizes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), the CO distribution in the bar and arm is resolved into many clumpy peaks that form ridge-like structures. Remarkably, in the eastern arm, the CO peaks form two arc-shaped ridges that run along the arm and exhibit a distinct difference in the activity of star formation: the one on the leading side has numerous HII regions associated with it, whereas the other one on the trailing side has only a few. To see whether GMCs form stars with uniform star formation efficiency (SFE) per free-fall time (SFEff), GMCs are identified from the data cube and then cross-matched with the catalog of HII regions to estimate the star formation rate for each of them. 179 GMCs with a median mass of 1.6 $times$ 10$^{6}$ $M_{odot}$ are identified. The mass-weighted average SFEff of the GMCs is $sim$9.4 $times$ 10$^{-3}$, which is in agreement with models of turbulence regulated star formation. Meanwhile, we find that SFEff is not universal within the mapped region. In particular, one of the arm ridges shows a high SFEff with a mass-weighted value of $sim$2.7 $times$ 10$^{-2}$, which is higher by more than a factor of 5 compared to the inter-arm regions. This large regional variation in SFEff favors the recent interpretation that GMCs do not form stars at a constant rate within their lifetime.
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We present spatial variations of the CO J=2-1/1-0 line ratio in M83 using Total Power array data from ALMA. While the intensities of these two lines correlate tightly, the ratio varies over the disk, with a disk average ratio of 0.69, and shows the galactic center and a two-arm spiral pattern. It is high (>0.7) in regions of high molecular gas surface density, but ranges from low to high ratios in regions of low surface density. The ratio correlates well with the spatial distributions and intensities of FUV and IR emissions, with FUV being the best correlated. It also correlates better with the ratio of IR intensities (70/350mic), a proxy for dust temperature, than with the IR intensities. Taken together, these results suggest either a direct or indirect link between the dust heating by the interstellar radiation field and the condition of GMCs, even though no efficient mechanism is known for a thermal coupling of dust and bulk gas in GMCs.
While molecular gas mass is usually derived from $^{12}$CO($J$=1-0) - the most fundamental line to explore molecular gas - it is often derived from $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1) assuming a constant $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1)/$^{12}$CO($J$=1-0) line ratio ($R_{2/1}$). We present variations of $R_{2/1}$ and effects of the assumption that $R_{2/1}$ is a constant in 24 nearby galaxies using $^{12}$CO data obtained with the Nobeyama 45-m radio telescope and IRAM 30-m telescope. The median of $R_{2/1}$ for all galaxies is 0.61, and the weighted mean of $R_{2/1}$ by $^{12}$CO($J$=1-0) integrated-intensity is 0.66 with a standard deviation of 0.19. The radial variation of $R_{2/1}$ shows that it is high (~0.8) in the inner ~1 kpc while its median in disks is nearly constant at 0.60 when all galaxies are compiled. In the case that the constant $R_{2/1}$ of 0.7 is adopted, we found that the total molecular gas mass derived from $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1) is underestimated/overestimated by ~20%, and at most by 35%. The scatter of a molecular gas surface density within each galaxy becomes larger by ~30%, and at most by 120%. Indices of the spatially resolved Kennicutt-Schmidt relation by $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1) are underestimated by 10-20%, at most 39% in 17 out of 24 galaxies. $R_{2/1}$ has good positive correlations with star-formation rate and infrared color, and a negative correlation with molecular gas depletion time. There is a clear tendency of increasing $R_{2/1}$ with increasing kinetic temperature ($T_{rm kin}$). Further, we found that not only $T_{rm kin}$ but also pressure of molecular gas is important to understand variations of $R_{2/1}$. Special considerations should be made when discussing molecular gas mass and molecular gas properties inferred from $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1) instead of $^{12}$CO($J$=1-0).
We examined radial variations in molecular-gas based star formation efficiency (SFE), which is defined as star formation rate per unit molecular gas mass, for 80 galaxies selected from the CO Multi-line Imaging of Nearby Galaxies project (Sorai et al. 2019). The radial variations in SFE for individual galaxies are typically a factor of 2 -- 3, which suggests that SFE is nearly constant along galactocentric radius. We found the averaged SFE in 80 galaxies of $(1.69 pm 1.1) times 10^{-9}$ yr$^{-1}$, which is consistent with Leroy et al. 2008 if we consider the contribution of helium to the molecular gas mass evaluation and the difference in the assumed initial mass function between two studies. We compared SFE among different morphological (i.e., SA, SAB, and SB) types, and found that SFE within the inner radii ($r/r_{25} < 0.3$, where $r_{25}$ is $B$-band isophotal radius at 25 mag arcsec$^{-2}$) of SB galaxies is slightly higher than that of SA and SAB galaxies. This trend can be partly explained by the dependence of SFE on global stellar mass, which probably relates to the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor through the metallicity. For two representative SB galaxies in our sample, NGC 3367 and NGC 7479, the ellipse of $r/r_{25}$ = 0.3 seems to cover not only the central region but also the inner part of the disk, mainly the bar. These two galaxies show higher SFE in the bar than in spiral arms. However, we found an opposite trend in NGC 4303; SFE is lower in the bar than in spiral arms, which is consistent with earlier studies (e.g., Momose et al. 2010). These results suggest diversity of star formation activities in the bar.
We resolve 182 individual giant molecular clouds (GMCs) larger than 2.5 $times$ 10$^{5}$ Msun in the inner disks of five large nearby spiral galaxies (NGC 2403, NGC 3031, NGC 4736, NGC 4826, and NGC 6946) to create the largest such sample of extragalactic GMCs within galaxies analogous to the Milky Way. Using a conservatively chosen sample of GMCs most likely to adhere to the virial assumption, we measure cloud sizes, velocity dispersions, and $^{12}$CO (J=1-0) luminosities and calculate cloud virial masses. The average conversion factor from CO flux to H$_{2}$ mass (or xcons) for each galaxy is 1-2 xcounits, all within a factor of two of the Milky Way disk value ($sim$2 xcounits). We find GMCs to be generally consistent within our errors between the galaxies and with Milky Way disk GMCs; the intrinsic scatter between clouds is of order a factor of two. Consistent with previous studies in the Local Group, we find a linear relationship between cloud virial mass and CO luminosity, supporting the assumption that the clouds in this GMC sample are gravitationally bound. We do not detect a significant population of GMCs with elevated velocity dispersions for their sizes, as has been detected in the Galactic center. Though the range of metallicities probed in this study is narrow, the average conversion factors of these galaxies will serve to anchor the high metallicity end of metallicity-xco trends measured using conversion factors in resolved clouds; this has been previously possible primarily with Milky Way measurements.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of $mathrm{^{13}CO(J=1-0)}$ line and 104 GHz continuum emission from NGC 604, a giant HII region (GHR) in the nearby spiral galaxy M33. Our high spatial resolution images ( 3.2$times$ 2.4, corresponding to $13 times 10$ pc physical scale) allow us to detect fifteen molecular clouds. We find spatial offsets between the $^{13}CO$ and 104 GHz continuum emission and also detect continuum emission near the centre of the GHR. The identified molecular clouds have sizes ranging from 5-21 pc, linewidths of 0.3-3.0 $mathrm{kms^{-1}}$ and luminosity-derived masses of (0.4-80.5) $times 10^3$ M$_{bigodot}$. These molecular clouds are in near virial equilibrium, with a spearman correlation coefficient of 0.98. The linewidth-size relationship for these clouds is offset from the corresponding relations for the Milky Way and for NGC 300, although this may be an artefact of the dendrogram process.
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