2024A&A...690A.169L

Neutral atomic gas (H I) effectively traces galactic dynamics across mid to large galactocentric radii. However, its limitations in observing small-scale changes within the central few kiloparsecs, coupled with the often observed H I deficit in galactic centers, necessitates the use of molecular gas emission as a preferred tracer in these regions. Understanding the dynamics of both neutral atomic and molecular gas is crucial for a more complete understanding of how galaxies evolve, funnel gas from the outer disk into their central parts, and eventually form stars. In this work we aim to quantify the dynamics of both, the neutral atomic and molecular gas, in the nearby spiral galaxies NGC 1512, NGC 4535, and NGC 7496 using new MeerKAT H I observations together with ALMA CO (2-1) observations from the PHANGS collaboration. We use the analysis tool ^3DBarolo to fit tilted ring models to the H I and CO observations. A combined approach of using the H I to constrain the true disk orientation parameters before applying these to the CO datasets is tested. This paper sets expectations for the results of the upcoming high-resolution H I coverage of many galaxies in the PHANGS-ALMA sample using MeerKAT or VLA, to establish a robust methodology for characterizing galaxy orientations and deriving dynamics from combing new H I with existing CO data.