The HI reservoir in central spiral galaxies and the implied star formation process

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dou, Jing, Peng, Yingjie, Gu, Qiusheng, Renzini, Alvio, Ho, Luis C., Mannucci, Filippo, Daddi, Emanuele, Zhang, Chengpeng, Li, Jiaxuan, Shi, Yong, Wang, Tao, Zhao, Dingyi, Lyu, Cheqiu, Li, Di, Yuan, Feng, Maiolino, Roberto, Gao, Yulong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Dou, Jing
Peng, Yingjie
Gu, Qiusheng
Renzini, Alvio
Ho, Luis C.
Mannucci, Filippo
Daddi, Emanuele
Zhang, Chengpeng
Li, Jiaxuan
Shi, Yong
Wang, Tao
Zhao, Dingyi
Lyu, Cheqiu
Li, Di
Yuan, Feng
Maiolino, Roberto
Gao, Yulong
author_facet Dou, Jing
Peng, Yingjie
Gu, Qiusheng
Renzini, Alvio
Ho, Luis C.
Mannucci, Filippo
Daddi, Emanuele
Zhang, Chengpeng
Li, Jiaxuan
Shi, Yong
Wang, Tao
Zhao, Dingyi
Lyu, Cheqiu
Li, Di
Yuan, Feng
Maiolino, Roberto
Gao, Yulong
contents The cold interstellar medium (ISM) as the raw material for star formation is critical to understanding galaxy evolution. It is generally understood that galaxies stop making stars when, in one way or another, they run out of gas. However, here we provide evidence that central spiral galaxies remain rich in atomic gas even if their star formation rate and molecular gas fraction have dropped significantly compared to "normal" star-forming galaxies of the same mass. Since HI is sensitive to external processes, here we investigate central spiral galaxies using a combined sample from SDSS, ALFALFA, and xGASS surveys. After proper incompleteness corrections, we find that the key HI scaling relations for central spirals show significant but regular systematic dependence on stellar mass. At any given stellar mass, the HI gas mass fraction is about constant with changing specific star formation rate (sSFR), which suggests that HI reservoir is ubiquitous in central spirals with any star formation status down to M* ~ 10^9 Msun. Together with the tight correlation between the molecular gas mass fraction and sSFR for galaxies across a wide range of different properties, it suggests that the decline of SFR of all central spirals in the local universe is due to the halt of H2 supply, though there is plenty of HI gas around. These hence provide critical observations of the dramatically different behavior of the cold multi-phase ISM, and a key to understand the star formation process and quenching mechanism.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_03168
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The HI reservoir in central spiral galaxies and the implied star formation process
Dou, Jing
Peng, Yingjie
Gu, Qiusheng
Renzini, Alvio
Ho, Luis C.
Mannucci, Filippo
Daddi, Emanuele
Zhang, Chengpeng
Li, Jiaxuan
Shi, Yong
Wang, Tao
Zhao, Dingyi
Lyu, Cheqiu
Li, Di
Yuan, Feng
Maiolino, Roberto
Gao, Yulong
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The cold interstellar medium (ISM) as the raw material for star formation is critical to understanding galaxy evolution. It is generally understood that galaxies stop making stars when, in one way or another, they run out of gas. However, here we provide evidence that central spiral galaxies remain rich in atomic gas even if their star formation rate and molecular gas fraction have dropped significantly compared to "normal" star-forming galaxies of the same mass. Since HI is sensitive to external processes, here we investigate central spiral galaxies using a combined sample from SDSS, ALFALFA, and xGASS surveys. After proper incompleteness corrections, we find that the key HI scaling relations for central spirals show significant but regular systematic dependence on stellar mass. At any given stellar mass, the HI gas mass fraction is about constant with changing specific star formation rate (sSFR), which suggests that HI reservoir is ubiquitous in central spirals with any star formation status down to M* ~ 10^9 Msun. Together with the tight correlation between the molecular gas mass fraction and sSFR for galaxies across a wide range of different properties, it suggests that the decline of SFR of all central spirals in the local universe is due to the halt of H2 supply, though there is plenty of HI gas around. These hence provide critical observations of the dramatically different behavior of the cold multi-phase ISM, and a key to understand the star formation process and quenching mechanism.
title The HI reservoir in central spiral galaxies and the implied star formation process
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03168