{sup 12}CO(J = 1 → 0) On-the-fly Mapping Survey of the Virgo Cluster Spirals. II. Molecular Gas Properties in Different Density Environments
- Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, 776 Daedeokdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34055 (Korea, Republic of)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 (United States)
- Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Postbus 800, 9700 AV Groningen (Netherlands)
- Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722 (Korea, Republic of)
This study investigated the properties of the molecular gas content and star formation activity of 17 Virgo spirals, 21 Ursa Major (UMa) spirals, 13 Pisces spiral galaxies, and a comparison sample of 11 field spiral galaxies with a spatially resolved gas and stellar distribution. The H i-deficient galaxies with a def{sub H i} > 0.4 have a similar range of CO luminosity normalized by the K-band luminosity (L {sub CO}/L {sub K}) like the field spirals, although their CO content can be smaller by up to a factor of 2. The CO, H i, and stellar disk diameters are closely related to each other for both cluster and field galaxies, and the relative diameters of the CO and H i disks grow monotonically and smoothly as the H i-to-stellar disk diameter ratio decreases. Cluster galaxies have a molecular gas consumption time up to 10 times shorter than that of the field comparison sample, suggesting a significant change in the molecular gas content and star formation activity among all the cluster galaxies, even when they do not show any sign of H i stripping. The strongly H i-stripped Virgo cluster galaxies show only a modestly reduced total gas consumption time, indicating that the star formation activity and gas consumption are a highly local (rather than global) phenomenon. Our finding is that the depletion of cold gas by ram-pressure stripping and/or starvation caused by preprocessing in each cluster environment makes galaxies evolve passively.
- OSTI ID:
- 22876070
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 843, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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