The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies

Details The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies

1997-12-16

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9712213v1

Astrophys.J.498:541,1998

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

23 pages, 2 tables, 7 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical Journal

Scientific paper

10.1086/305588

Measurements of H-alpha, HI, and CO distributions in 61 normal spiral galaxies are combined with published far-infrared and CO observations of 36 infrared-selected starburst galaxies, in order to study the form of the global star formation law, over the full range of gas densities and star formation rates (SFRs) observed in galaxies. The disk-averaged SFRs and gas densities for the combined sample are well represented by a Schmidt law with index N = 1.4+-0.15. The Schmidt law provides a surprisingly tight parametrization of the global star formation law, extending over several orders of magnitude in SFR and gas density. An alternative formulation of the star formation law, in which the SFR is presumed to scale with the ratio of the gas density to the average orbital timescale, also fits the data very well. Both descriptions provide potentially useful "recipes" for modelling the SFR in numerical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution.

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