Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mangum, Jeffrey G
• Darling, Jeremy
• Henkel, Christian
• Menten, Karl M

Titel

FORMALDEHYDE DENSITOMETRY OF STARBURST GALAXIES: DENSITY-INDEPENDENT GLOBAL STAR FORMATION

Ist Teil von

• The Astrophysical journal, 2013-04, Vol.766 (2), p.1-26

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (Open access)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Accurate techniques that allow for the derivation of the spatial density in star formation regions are rare. A technique that has found application for the derivation of spatial densities in Galactic star formation regions utilizes the density-sensitive properties of the K-doublet transitions of formaldehyde (H[sub 2]CO). In this paper, we present an extension of our survey of the formaldehyde 110-111 and 211-212 K-doublet transitions of H[sub 2]CO in a sample of 56 star-burst systems. We have extended the number of galaxies in which both transitions have been detected from 5 to 13. We have also used our H[sub 2]CO measurements to derive two separate measures of the dense gas mass which are generally smaller, in many cases by a factor of 102-103, than those derived using HCN. The disparity suggests that H[sub 2]CO traces a denser, more compact component of the giant molecular clouds in our star-burst galaxy sample.