The star formation rate-dense gas relation in galaxies as measured by HCN(3-2) emission

被引：38

作者：

Bussmann, R. S. ^{[1
]}

Narayanan, D. ^{[1
,2
]}

Shirley, Y. L. ^{[1
]}

Juneau, S. ^{[1
]}

Wu, J. ^{[2
]}

Solomon, P. M. ^{[3
]}

Bout, P. A. Vanden ^{[4
]}

Moustakas, J. ^{[5
]}

Walker, C. K. ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Arizona, Steward Observ, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA

[2] Harvard Smithsonian Ctr Astrophys, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[3] SUNY Stony Brook, Dept Phys & Astron, Stony Brook, NY 11974 USA

[4] Natl Radio Astron Observ, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA

[5] NYU, Ctr Cosmol & Particle Phys, New York, NY 10003 USA

来源：

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS | 2008年 / 681卷 / 02期

关键词：

galaxies : evolution; galaxies : ISM; submillimeter;

D O I：

10.1086/590181

中图分类号：

P1 [天文学];

学科分类号：

0704 ;

摘要：

We present observations made with the 10 m Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope of HCN(3-2) emission from a sample of 30 nearby galaxies ranging in infrared luminosity from 10(10) to 10(12.5) L-circle dot and HCN(3-2) luminosity from 10(6) to 10(9) K km s(-1) pc(2). We examine the correlation between the infrared luminosity and HCN(3-2) luminosity and find that the best-fit linear regression has a slope (in log-log space) of. Including 0.74 +/- 0.12 recently published data from Gracia-Carpio et al. tightens the constraints on the best-fit slope to. 0.79 +/- 0.09 This slope below unity suggests that the HCN(3-2) molecular line luminosity is not linearly tracing the amount of dense gas. Our results are consistent with predictions from recent theoretical models that find slopes below unity when the line luminosity depends on the average gas density with a power-law index greater than a Kennicutt-Schmidt index of 1.5.

引用

页码：L73 / L76

页数：4

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