Kinematical properties of giant molecular clouds and star forming efficiency

We are interested in the relationship between interacting luminous galaxies and their star forming efficiency. However, because of the limitation of available data, we have studied kinematic properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) associated with the star-forming regions in our Galaxy. We found that the star-forming efficiency (SFE) is correlated not only with the gas density (n), but also strongly with the velocity dispersion (sigma(v)) and the mass of a GMC. We obtained a modified Schmidt's law by fitting the derived SEE to the gas density and velocity dispersion to be: SFE proportional to n(alpha)sigma(v)(beta) where the indices were determined as alpha similar to 0.03 and beta similar to -3.3. This implies that stars are born more efficiently in a quiet cloud than in a disturbed cloud, and that the SFE is strongly dependent on the kinematical property of gas clouds.