Vertico. IV. Environmental effects on the gas distribution and star formation efficiency of virgo cluster spirals

V Villanueva, AD Bolatto, S Vogel… - The Astrophysical …, 2022 - iopscience.iop.org
V Villanueva, AD Bolatto, S Vogel, T Brown, CD Wilson, N Zabel, S Ellison, ARH Stevens
The Astrophysical Journal, 2022iopscience.iop.org
We measure the molecular-to-atomic gas ratio, R mol, and the star formation rate (SFR) per
unit molecular gas mass, SFE mol, in 38 nearby galaxies selected from the Virgo
Environment Traced in CO (VERTICO) survey. We stack ALMA 12 CO (J= 2− 1) spectra
coherently using H i velocities from the VIVA survey to detect faint CO emission out to
galactocentric radii r gal∼ 1.2 r 25. We determine the scale lengths for the molecular and
stellar components, finding a∼ 3: 5 relation compared to∼ 1: 1 in field galaxies, indicating …
Abstract
We measure the molecular-to-atomic gas ratio, R mol, and the star formation rate (SFR) per unit molecular gas mass, SFE mol, in 38 nearby galaxies selected from the Virgo Environment Traced in CO (VERTICO) survey. We stack ALMA 12 CO (J= 2− 1) spectra coherently using H i velocities from the VIVA survey to detect faint CO emission out to galactocentric radii r gal∼ 1.2 r 25. We determine the scale lengths for the molecular and stellar components, finding a∼ 3: 5 relation compared to∼ 1: 1 in field galaxies, indicating that the CO emission is more centrally concentrated than the stars. We compute R mol as a function of different physical quantities. While the spatially resolved R mol on average decreases with increasing radius, we find that the mean molecular-to-atomic gas ratio within the stellar effective radius R e, R mol (r< R e), shows a systematic increase with the level of H i, truncation and/or asymmetry (H I perturbation). Analysis of the molecular-and the atomic-to-stellar mass ratios within R e,
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