2025ApJ...994..263S -
Astrophys. J., 994, 263 (2025/December-1)
Resolved Profiles of Stellar Mass, Star Formation Rate, and Predicted CO-to-H2 Conversion Factor Across Thousands of Local Galaxies.
SUN J., TENG Y.-H., CHIANG I.-D., LEROY A.K., SANDSTROM K., DEN BROK J., BOLATTO A.D., CHASTENET J., CHOWN R., HUGHES A., KOCH E.W. and WILLIAMS T.G.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present radial profiles of surface brightness in UV and IR bands, estimate stellar mass surface density (Σ⋆) and star formation rate surface density (ΣSFR), and predict the CO-to-H2 conversion factor (αCO) for over 5000 local galaxies with stellar mass M⋆ ≥ 109.3M⊙. We build these profiles and measure galaxy half-light radii using GALEX and WISE images from the z0MGS program, with special care given to highly inclined galaxies. From the UV and IR surface brightness profiles, we estimate Σ⋆ and ΣSFR and use them to predict αCO with state-of-the-art empirical prescriptions. We validate our (kpc-scale) αCO predictions against observational estimates, finding the best agreement when accounting for CO-dark gas as well as CO emissivity and excitation effects. The CO-dark correction plays a primary role in lower-mass galaxies, whereas CO emissivity and excitation effects become more important in higher-mass and more actively star-forming galaxies, respectively. We compare our estimated αCO to observed galaxy-integrated SFR to CO luminosity ratio as a function of M⋆. A large compilation of literature data suggests that star-forming galaxies with M⋆ = 109.5–11M⊙ show strong anticorrelations of SFR/$L{{\prime} }_{{\rm{CO}}(1\,\unicode{x02013}\,0)}\propto {M}_{\star }^{-0.29}$ and SFR/$L{{\prime} }_{{\rm{CO}}(2\,\unicode{x02013}\,1)}\propto {M}_{\star }^{-0.40}$. The estimated αCO trends, when combined with a constant molecular gas depletion time tdep, can only explain ≈1/3 of these SFR/$L{{\prime} }_{{\rm{CO}}}$ trends. This suggests that tdep being systematically shorter in lower-mass star-forming galaxies is the main cause of the observed SFR/$L{{\prime} }_{{\rm{CO}}}$ variations. We publish all data products from this work, including galaxy sizes, UV and IR surface brightness profiles, Σ⋆, ΣSFR, and αCO estimates.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Journal keyword(s):
Disk galaxies - Molecular gas - Star formation - CO line emission
Simbad objects:
16
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