2008/05/26 by Desika Narayanan, Thomas J. Cox, Lars Hernquist · 17 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Infrared #Luminosity #Spectral index #Star formation #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/590342
published in The Astrophysical Journal 681(2), L77-L80 (IOP Publishing) · Accepted at ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2008/05/26 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We investigate the relationship between the star formation rate (SFR) and dense molecular gas mass in the nuclei of galaxies. To do this, we utilize the observed 850 μm luminosity as a proxy for the infrared luminosity ( L IR ) and SFR, and we correlate this with the observed CO( J = 3–2) luminosity. We find tentative evidence that the L IR -CO( J = 3–2) index is similar to the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) index ( N ≈ 1.5) in the central ~1.7 kpc of galaxies, and it flattens to a roughly linear index when including emission from the entire galaxy. This result may imply that the volumetric Schmidt relation is the underlying driver behind the observed SFR-dense gas correlations, and it provides tentative confirmation for recent numerical models. While the data exclude the possibility of a constant L IR -CO( J = 3–2) index for both galaxy nuclei and global measurements at the ~80% confidence level, the considerable error bars cannot preclude alternative interpretations.