We present the first complete CO J=3-2 map of the nearby grand-design spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194), at a spatial resolution of ~600 pc, obtained with the HARP-B instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The map covers the entire optical galaxy
disk and out to the companion NGC 5195, with CO J=3-2 emission detected over an area of ~9x6 (~21x14 kpc). We describe the CO J=3-2 integrated intensity map and combine our results with maps of CO J=2-1, CO J=1-0 and other data from the literature to investigate the variation of the molecular gas, atomic gas and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) properties of M51 as a function of distance along the spiral structure on sub-kpc scales. We find that for the CO J=3-2 and CO J=2-1 transitions there is a clear difference between the variation of arm and inter-arm emission with galactocentric radius, with the inter-arm emission relatively constant with radius and the contrast between arm and inter-arm emission decreasing with radius. For CO J=1-0 and HI the variation with radius shows a similar trend for the arm and inter-arm regions, and the arm-inter-arm contrast appears relatively constant with radius. We investigate the variation of CO line ratios (J=3-2/2-1, J=2-1/1-0 and J=3-2/1-0) as a function of distance along the spiral structure. Line ratios are consistent with the range of typical values for other nearby galaxies in the literature. The highest CO J=3-2/2-1 line ratios are found in the central ~1 kpc and in the spiral arms and the lowest line ratios in the inter-arm regions.We find no clear evidence of a trend with radius for the spiral arms but for the inter-arm regions there appears to be a trend for all CO line ratios to increase with radius. We find a strong relationship between the ratio of CO J=3-2 intensity to stellar continuum-subtracted 8mu PAH surface brightness and the CO J=3-2 intensity that appears to vary with radius.
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey (NGLS) comprises an HI-selected sample of 155 galaxies spanning all morphological types with distances less than 25 Mpc. We describe the scientific goals of the survey, the sample select
ion, and the observing strategy. We also present an atlas and analysis of the CO J=3-2 maps for the 47 galaxies in the NGLS which are also part of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey. We find a wide range of molecular gas mass fractions in the galaxies in this sample and explore the correlation of the far-infrared luminosity, which traces star formation, with the CO luminosity, which traces the molecular gas mass. By comparing the NGLS data with merging galaxies at low and high redshift which have also been observed in the CO J=3-2 line, we show that the correlation of far-infrared and CO luminosity shows a significant trend with luminosity. This trend is consistent with a molecular gas depletion time which is more than an order of magnitude faster in the merger galaxies than in nearby normal galaxies. We also find a strong correlation of the L(FIR)/L(CO3-2) ratio with the atomic to molecular gas mass ratio. This correlation suggests that some of the far-infrared emission originates from dust associated with atomic gas and that its contribution is particularly important in galaxies where most of the gas is in the atomic phase.
We present large-area maps of the CO J=3-2 emission obtained at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope for four spiral galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. We combine these data with published CO J=1-0, 24 micron, and Halpha images to measure the CO line ratios
, molecular gas masses, and instantaneous gas depletion times. For three galaxies in our sample (NGC 4254, NGC4321, and NGC 4569), we obtain molecular gas masses of 7E8-3E9 Msun and disk-averaged instantaneous gas depletion times of 1.1-1.7 Gyr. We argue that the CO J=3-2 line is a better tracer of the dense star forming molecular gas than the CO J=1-0 line, as it shows a better correlation with the star formation rate surface density both within and between galaxies. NGC 4254 appears to have a larger star formation efficiency(smaller gas depletion time), perhaps because it is on its first passage through the Virgo Cluster. NGC 4569 shows a large-scale gradient in the gas properties traced by the CO J=3-2/J=1-0 line ratio, which suggests that its interaction with the intracluster medium is affecting the dense star-forming portion of the interstellar medium directly. The fourth galaxy in our sample, NGC 4579, has weak CO J=3-2 emission despite having bright 24 micron emission; however, much of the central luminosity in this galaxy may be due to the presence of a central AGN.
