Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2010-11-18
2010 ApJ, 721, 383
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
17 pages, 10 figures, published by ApJ; http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...721..383M
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/721/1/383
We present new $^{12}$CO(J=1-0) observations of the barred galaxy NGC 4303 using the Nobeyama 45m telescope (NRO45) and the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). The H$\alpha$ images of barred spiral galaxies often show active star formation in spiral arms, but less so in bars. We quantify the difference by measuring star formation rate and efficiency at a scale where local star formation is spatially resolved. Our CO map covers the central 2$\farcm$3 region of the galaxy; the combination of NRO45 and CARMA provides a high fidelity image, enabling accurate measurements of molecular gas surface density. We find that star formation rate and efficiency are twice as high in the spiral arms as in the bar. We discuss this difference in the context of the Kennicutt-Schimidt (KS) law, which indicates a constant star formation rate at a given gas surface density. The KS law breaks down at our native resolution ($\sim$ 250 pc), and substantial smoothing (to 500 pc) is necessary to reproduce the KS law, although with greater scatter.
Koda Jin
Momose Rieko
Okumura Sachiko. K.
Sawada Tsuyoshi
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