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11. ALMA galaxy properties in the COSMOS survey field
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/820/83
Title:
ALMA galaxy properties in the COSMOS survey field
Short Name:
J/ApJ/820/83
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
ALMA Cycle 2 observations of long-wavelength dust emission in 145 star-forming galaxies are used to probe the evolution of the star-forming interstellar medium (ISM). We also develop a physical basis and empirical calibration (with 72 low-z and z~2 galaxies) for using the dust continuum as a quantitative probe of ISM masses. The galaxies with the highest star formation rates (SFRs) at <z>=2.2 and 4.4 have gas masses up to 100 times that of the Milky Way and gas mass fractions reaching 50%-80%, i.e., gas masses 1-4x their stellar masses. We find a single high-z star formation law: SFR=35 M_mol_^0.89^x(1+z)_z=2_^0.95^x(sSFR)_MS_^0.23^ M_{sun}_/yr - an approximately linear dependence on the ISM mass and an increased star formation efficiency per unit gas mass at higher redshift. Galaxies above the main sequence (MS) have larger gas masses but are converting their ISM into stars on a timescale only slightly shorter than those on the MS; thus, these "starbursts" are largely the result of having greatly increased gas masses rather than an increased efficiency of converting gas to stars. At z>1, the entire population of star-forming galaxies has ~2-5 times shorter gas depletion times than low-z galaxies. These shorter depletion times indicate a different mode of star formation in the early universe - most likely dynamically driven by compressive, high-dispersion gas motions - a natural consequence of the high gas accretion rates.
12. ALMA images of the CND and SgrA*
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/618/A35
Title:
ALMA images of the CND and SgrA*
Short Name:
J/A+A/618/A35
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
We present 1"-resolution ALMA observations of the circumnuclear disk (CND) and the environment around SgrA*. The images unveil the presence of small spatial scale CO (J=3-2) molecular "cloudlets" within the central pc of the Milky Way, moving at high speeds, up to 300km/s along the line-of-sight. The CO-emitting structures show intricate morphologies: extended and filamentary at high negative-velocities (v_LSR_<-150km/s), more localized and clumpy at extreme positive-velocities (v_LSR_>+200km/s). Based on the pencil-beam CO absorption spectrum toward SgrA* synchrotron emission, we also present evidence for a diffuse gas component producing absorption features at more extreme negative-velocities (v_LSR_<-200km/s). The CND shows a clumpy spatial distribution. Its motion requires a bundle of non-uniformly rotating streams of slightly different inclinations. The inferred gas density peaks are lower than the local Roche limit. This supports that CND molecular cores are transient. We apply the two standard orbit models, spirals vs. ellipses, invoked to explain the kinematics of the ionized gas streamers around SgrA*. The location and velocities of the CO cloudlets are inconsistent with the spiral model, and only two of them are consistent with the Keplerian ellipse model. Most cloudlets, however, show similar velocities that are incompatible with the motions of the ionized streamers or with gas bounded to the central gravity. We speculate that they are leftovers of more massive, tidally disrupted, clouds that fall into the cavity, or that they originate from instabilities in the inner rim of the CND and infall from there. Molecular cloudlets, all together with a mass of several 10M_{sun}_, exist around SgrA*. Most of them must be short-lived: photoevaporated by the intense stellar radiation field, blown away by winds from massive stars, or disrupted by strong gravitational shears.
13. ALMA Magellanic Bridge A molecular clouds
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/641/A97
Title:
ALMA Magellanic Bridge A molecular clouds
Short Name:
J/A+A/641/A97
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
The Magellanic Bridge is a tidal feature located between both Magellanic Clouds, containing young stars formed in situ. Its proximity allows high-resolution studies of molecular gas, dust and star formation in a tidal, low metallicity environment. Our goal is to characterize gas and dust emission in Magellanic Bridge A, the source with the highest 870um excess of emission found in single dish surveys. Using the ALMA telescope including the Morita Array, we mapped with sub-parsec resolution a 3arcmin, field of view centered on the Magellanic Bridge A molecular cloud, in 1.3mm continuum emission and ^12^CO(2-1 line emission. This region was also mapped in continuum at 870um and in ^12^CO(2-1) line emission at ~6pc resolution with the APEX telescope. To study its dust properties, we also use archival Herschel and Spitzer data. We combine the ALMA and APEX ^12^CO(2-1) line cubes to study the molecular gas emission. Magallanic Bridge A breaks up into two distinct molecular clouds in dust and ^12^CO(2-1) emission, which we call North and South. Dust emission in the North source, according to our best parameters from fitting the far-infrared fluxes, is ~3K colder than in the South source in correspondence to its less developed star formation. Both dust sources present large submillimeter excesses in LABOCA data: according to our best fits the excess over the modified blackbody (MBB) fit to the Spitzer/Herschel continuum is E(870um)~7 and E(870um)~3 for the North and South sources respectively. Nonetheless, we do not detect the corresponding 1.3mm continuum with ALMA. Our limits are compatible with the extrapolation of the MBB fits and therefore we cannot independently confirm the excess at this longer wavelength. The ^12^CO(2-1) emission is concentrated in two parsec-sized clouds with virial masses around 400 and 700M_{sun}_ each. Their bulk volume densities are n(H_2_)~0.7-2.6x10^3^cm^-3^, larger than typical bulk densities of Galactic molecular clouds. The ^12^CO luminosity to H_2_ mass conversion factor {alpha}_CO_ is 6.5 and 15.3M_{sun}_/(K.(km/s)pc^2^) for the North and South clouds, calculated using their respective virial masses and ^12^CO(2-1) luminosities. Gas mass estimates from our MBB fits to dust emission yields masses M~1.3x10^3^M_{sun}_ and 2.9x10^3^M_{sun}_ for North and South respectively, a factor of ~4 larger than the virial masses we infer from ^12^CO.
14. ALMA maps of 6 sources of star forming regions
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/636/A67
Title:
ALMA maps of 6 sources of star forming regions
Short Name:
J/A+A/636/A67
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
As a building block for amino acids, formamide (NH_2_CHO) is an important molecule in astrobiology and astrochemistry, but its formation path in the interstellar medium is not understood well. We aim to find empirical evidence to support the chemical relationships of formamide to HNCO and H_2_CO. We examine high angular resolution (~0.2") Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) maps of six sources in three high-mass star-forming regions and compare the spatial extent, integrated emission peak position, and velocity structure of HNCO and H_2_CO line emission with that of NH_2_CHO by using moment maps. Through spectral modeling, we compare the abundances of these three species. In these sources, the emission peak separation and velocity dispersion of formamide emission is most often similar to HNCO emission, while the velocity structure is generally just as similar to H_2_CO and HNCO (within errors). From the spectral modeling, we see that the abundances between all three of our focus species are correlated, and the relationship between NH_2_CHO and HNCO reproduces the previously demonstrated abundance relationship. In this first interferometric study, which compares two potential parent species to NH_2_CHO, we find that all moment maps for HNCO are more similar to NH_2_CHO than H_2_CO in one of our six sources (G24 A1). For the other five sources, the relationship between NH_2_CHO, HNCO, and H_2_CO is unclear as the different moment maps for each source are not consistently more similar to one species as opposed to the other.
15. ALMA observations in 107 galaxies at z=0.2-2.5
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/783/84
Title:
ALMA observations in 107 galaxies at z=0.2-2.5
Short Name:
J/ApJ/783/84
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
The use of submillimeter dust continuum emission to probe the mass of interstellar dust and gas in galaxies is empirically calibrated using samples of local star-forming galaxies, Planck observations of the Milky Way, and high-redshift submillimeter galaxies. All of these objects suggest a similar calibration, strongly supporting the view that the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the dust emission can be used as an accurate and very fast probe of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies. We present ALMA Cycle 0 observations of the Band 7 (350GHz) dust emission in 107 galaxies from z=0.2 to 2.5. Three samples of galaxies with a total of 101 galaxies were stellar-mass-selected from COSMOS to have M_*_=~10^11^M_{sun}_:37 at z~0.4, 33 at z~0.9, and 31 at z=2. A fourth sample with six infrared-luminous galaxies at z=2 was observed for comparison with the purely mass-selected samples. From the fluxes detected in the stacked images for each sample, we find that the ISM content has decreased by a factor ~6 from 1 to 2x10^10^M_{sun}_ at both z=2 and 0.9 down to ~2x10^9^M_{sun}_at z=0.4. The infrared-luminous sample at z=2 shows a further ~4 times increase in M_ISM_compared with the equivalent non-infrared-bright sample at the same redshift. The gas mass fractions are ~2%+/-0.5%, 12%+/-3%, 14%+/-2%, and 53%+/-3% for the four subsamples (z=0.4, 0.9, and 2 and infrared-bright galaxies).
16. ALMA obs. of polarized dust emission from Ser-emb 8
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/842/L9
Title:
ALMA obs. of polarized dust emission from Ser-emb 8
Short Name:
J/ApJ/842/L9
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
We report Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of polarized dust emission from the protostellar source Ser-emb 8 at a linear resolution of 140au. Assuming models of dust-grain alignment hold, the observed polarization pattern gives a projected view of the magnetic field structure in this source. Contrary to expectations based on models of strongly magnetized star formation, the magnetic field in Ser-emb 8 does not exhibit an hourglass morphology. Combining the new ALMA data with previous observational studies, we can connect magnetic field structure from protostellar core (~80000au) to disk (~100au) scales. We compare our observations with four magnetohydrodynamic gravo-turbulence simulations made with the AREPO code that have initial conditions ranging from super-Alfvenic (weakly magnetized) to sub-Alfvenic (strongly magnetized). These simulations achieve the spatial dynamic range necessary to resolve the collapse of protostars from the parsec scale of star-forming clouds down to the ~100au scale probed by ALMA. Only in the very strongly magnetized simulation do we see both the preservation of the field direction from cloud to disk scales and an hourglass-shaped field at <1000au scales. We conduct an analysis of the relative orientation of the magnetic field and the density structure in both the Ser-emb 8 ALMA observations and the synthetic observations of the four AREPO simulations. We conclude that the Ser-emb 8 data are most similar to the weakly magnetized simulations, which exhibit random alignment, in contrast to the strongly magnetized simulation, where the magnetic field plays a role in shaping the density structure in the source. In the weak-field case, it is turbulence-not the magnetic field-that shapes the material that forms the protostar, highlighting the dominant role that turbulence can play across many orders of magnitude in spatial scale.
17. ALMA obs. of star-forming regions toward NGC6334I
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/883/129
Title:
ALMA obs. of star-forming regions toward NGC6334I
Short Name:
J/ApJ/883/129
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
The relative column densities of the structural isomers methyl formate, glycolaldehyde, and acetic acid are derived for a dozen positions toward the massive star-forming regions MM1 and MM2 in the NGC 6334I complex, which are separated by ~4000au. Relative column densities of these molecules are also gathered from the literature for 13 other star-forming regions. In this combined data set, a clear bimodal distribution is observed in the relative column densities of glycolaldehyde and methyl formate. No such distribution is evident with acetic acid. The two trends are comprised of star-forming regions with a variety of masses, suggesting that there must be some other common parameter that is heavily impacting the formation of glycolaldehyde. This is indicative of some demonstrable differentiation in these cores; studying the abundances of these isomers may provide a clue as to the integral chemical processes ongoing in a variety of protostellar environments.
18. ALMA obs. of UDS and GOODS-S massive galaxies
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/901/74
Title:
ALMA obs. of UDS and GOODS-S massive galaxies
Short Name:
J/ApJ/901/74
Date:
18 Feb 2022 09:10:36
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
We present 0.2 resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations at 870um in a stellar mass-selected sample of 85 massive (M*>10^11^M_{sun}_) star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at z=1.9-2.6 in the CANDELS/3D-Hubble Space Telescope fields of UDS and GOODS-S. We measure the effective radius of the rest-frame far-infrared (FIR) emission for 62 massive SFGs. They are distributed over wide ranges of FIR size from R_e,FIR_=0.4kpc to R_e,FIR_=6kpc. The effective radius of the FIR emission is smaller by a factor of 2.3_-1.0_^+1.9^ than the effective radius of the optical emission and is smaller by a factor of 1.9_-1.0_^+1.9^ than the half-mass radius. Taking into account potential extended components, the FIR size would change only by ~10%. By combining the spatial distributions of the FIR and optical emission, we investigate how galaxies change the effective radius of the optical emission and the stellar mass within a radius of 1kpc, M_1kpc_. The compact starburst puts most of the massive SFGs on the mass-size relation for quiescent galaxies (QGs) at z~2 within 300Myr if the current star formation activity and its spatial distribution are maintained. We also find that within 300Myr, ~38% of massive SFGs can reach the central mass of M_1kpc_=10^10.5^M_{sun}_, which is around the boundary between massive SFGs and QGs. These results suggest an outside-in transformation scenario in which a dense core is formed at the center of a more extended disk, likely via dissipative in-disk inflows. Synchronized observations at ALMA 870um and James Webb Space Telescope 3-4um will explicitly verify this scenario.
19. ALMaQUEST. IV. ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching & star formation
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/903/145
Title:
ALMaQUEST. IV. ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching & star formation
Short Name:
J/ApJ/903/145
Date:
15 Mar 2022
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
The ALMaQUEST (ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching and STar formation) survey is a program with spatially resolved 12CO(1-0) measurements obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) for 46 galaxies selected from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) DR15 optical integral-field spectroscopic survey. The aim of the ALMaQUEST survey is to investigate the dependence of star formation activity on the cold molecular gas content at kiloparsec scales in nearby galaxies. The sample consists of galaxies spanning a wide range in specific star formation rate (sSFR), including starburst (SB), main-sequence (MS), and green valley (GV) galaxies. In this paper, we present the sample selection and characteristics of the ALMA observations and showcase some of the key results enabled by the combination of spatially matched stellar populations and gas measurements. Considering the global (aperture-matched) stellar mass, molecular gas mass, and star formation rate of the sample, we find that the sSFR depends on both the star formation efficiency (SFE) and the molecular gas fraction (f_H_2__), although the correlation with the latter is slightly weaker. Furthermore, the dependence of sSFR on the molecular gas content (SFE or f_H_2__) is stronger than that on either the atomic gas fraction or the molecular-to-atomic gas fraction, albeit with the small Hi sample size. On kiloparsec scales, the variations in both SFE and f_H_2__ within individual galaxies can be as large as 1-2dex, thereby demonstrating that the availability of spatially resolved observations is essential to understand the details of both star formation and quenching processes.
20. ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the HUDF (ASPECS)
ID:
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/882/138
Title:
ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the HUDF (ASPECS)
Short Name:
J/ApJ/882/138
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
We use the results from the ALMA large program ASPECS, the spectroscopic survey in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), to constrain CO luminosity functions of galaxies and the resulting redshift evolution of {rho}(H_2_). The broad frequency range covered enables us to identify CO emission lines of different rotational transitions in the HUDF at z>1. We find strong evidence that the CO luminosity function evolves with redshift, with the knee of the CO luminosity function decreasing in luminosity by an order of magnitude from ~2 to the local universe. Based on Schechter fits, we estimate that our observations recover the majority (up to ~90%, depending on the assumptions on the faint end) of the total cosmic CO luminosity at z=1.0-3.1. After correcting for CO excitation, and adopting a Galactic CO-to-H_2_ conversion factor, we constrain the evolution of the cosmic molecular gas density {rho}(H_2_): this cosmic gas density peaks at z~1.5 and drops by a factor of 6.5_-1.4_^+1.8^ to the value measured locally. The observed evolution in {rho}(H_2_), therefore, closely matches the evolution of the cosmic star formation rate density {rho}SFR. We verify the robustness of our result with respect to assumptions on source inclusion and/or CO excitation. As the cosmic star formation history can be expressed as the product of the star formation efficiency and the cosmic density of molecular gas, the similar evolution of {rho}(H_2_) and {rho}SFR leaves only little room for a significant evolution of the average star formation efficiency in galaxies since z~3 (85% of cosmic history).

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