COLD GASS, an IRAM legacy survey of molecular gas in massive galaxies – I. Relations between H2, H i, stellar content and structural properties

By A. Saintonge, G. Kauffmann, C. Kramer, L. Tacconi, C. Buchbender, B. Catinella, S. Fabello, J. Graciá-Carpio, Jing Wang, L. Cortese and 14 more. 2011

401 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We are conducting COLD GASS, a legacy survey for molecular gas in nearby galaxies. Using the IRAM 30-m telescope, we measure the CO(1-0) line in a sample of similar to 350 nearby (D-L similar or equal to 100-200 Mpc), massive galaxies (log(M-*/M-circle dot) > 10.0). The sample is selected purely according to stellar mass, and therefore provides an unbiased view of molecular gas in these systems. By combining the IRAM data with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry and spectroscopy, GALEX imaging and high-quality Arecibo HI data, we investigate the partition of condensed baryons between stars, atomic gas and molecular gas in 0.1-10L* galaxies. In this paper, we present CO luminosities and molecular hydrogen masses for the first 222 galaxies. The overall CO detection rate is 54 per cent, but our survey also uncovers the existence of sharp thresholds in galaxy structural parameters such as stellar mass surface density and concentration index, below which all galaxies have a measurable cold gas component but above which the detection rate of the CO line drops suddenly. The mean molecular gas fraction MH2/M* of the CO detections is 0.066 +/- 0.039, and this fraction does not depend on stellar mass, but is a strong function of (NUV - r) colour. Through stacking, we set a firm upper limit of MH2/M-* = 0.0016 +/- 0.0005 for red galaxies with NUV - r > 5.0. The average molecular-to-atomic hydrogen ratio in present-day galaxies is 0.3, with significant scatter from one galaxy to the next. The existence of strong detection thresholds in both the HI and CO lines suggests that 'quenching' processes have occurred in these systems. Intriguingly, atomic gas strongly dominates in the minority of galaxies with significant cold gas that lie above these thresholds. This suggests that some re-accretion of gas may still be possible following the quenching event.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5292278c632b9a36ae93acb3838274340d7c7194

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

THE HERSCHEL REFERENCE SURVEY: DUST IN EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES AND ACROSS THE HUBBLE SEQUENCE (2011, background): “Saintonge et al. (2011) have found that galaxies with NUV–r > 5 have very little molecular gas and Kaviraj et al. (2007), Schawinski et al. (2007), and Yi et al. (2005) have showed that quiescent non-star- forming ETGs occupy the region above the boundary NUV–r = 5.4.”
The KMOS Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS):dynamical properties, gas and dark matter fractions of typical z~1 star-forming galaxies (2016, background): “This is in full agreement with the average found by Saintonge et al. (2011b) in nearby galaxies of ∼1 Gyr.”
Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, methodology): “To account for that, we use the empirical finding that the molecular-to-neutral mass ratio at z ∼ 0 is approximately 1/3 (Saintonge et al. 2011) to derive a lower limit for the simulated molecular mass by dividing the star-forming gas mass by a factor of 4.”
A unified model for galactic discs: star formation, turbulence driving, and mass transport (2017, background): “However, massive local spirals like the Milky Way are sufficiently gas poor (fgas ∼ 10–20 per cent – Saintonge et al. 2011) that for the most part they have Q∗ < Qg: Romeo & Mogotsi (2017) find Qg/Q∗ ≈ 0.5–10 for the HERACLES / THINGS sample, with the bulk of the data at Qg/Q∗ ≈ 3.”
REGULARITY UNDERLYING COMPLEXITY: A REDSHIFT-INDEPENDENT DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTINUOUS VARIATION OF GALAXY-SCALE MOLECULAR GAS PROPERTIES IN THE MASS-STAR FORMATION RATE PLANE (2013, neutral): “We augment the local MS galaxies from the HERACLES data set with a subset of galaxies from the first release of the COLD GASS survey (Saintonge et al. 2011) for which an accurate IR luminosity could be calculated thanks to the presence of a counterpart in either the IRAS Faint Source Catalog (v2;…”
xGASS: total cold gas scaling relations and molecular-to-atomic gas ratios of galaxies in the local Universe (2018, methodology): “Samples of molecular hydrogen content, which is traced by carbon monoxide (12CO, hereafter CO) line emission, are almost two orders of magnitude smaller (Young et al. 1995; Saintonge et al. 2011; Boselli, Cortese & Boquien 2014; Bothwell et al. 2014; Cicone et al. 2017).”
A BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING OF METALS AT z ∼ 0: RESULTS FROM THE COS-HALOS SURVEY (2013, background): “In Figure 3 we show the atomic plus molecular gas mass measurements from McGaugh (2005, 2012) and Leroy et al. (2008), adding star-forming (NUV − r < 4) galaxies from the COLDGASS sample (Saintonge et al. 2011).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “…photometry, which allows the thermal emission from dust to be measured directly, star formation rates estimated from UV/optical photometry can be significantly biased if the range of dust extinction values in the SED model library is incorrect (Saintonge et al. 2011, Wuyts et al. 2011a).”
THE IMPACT OF INTERACTIONS, BARS, BULGES, AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI ON STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY IN LOCAL MASSIVE GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “A full description of the instrumental setup, observing strategy and data reduction procedure is presented in Saintonge et al. (2011a).”
A UNIVERSAL, LOCAL STAR FORMATION LAW IN GALACTIC CLOUDS, NEARBY GALAXIES, HIGH-REDSHIFT DISKS, AND STARBURSTS (2011, neutral): “In the unbiased sample provided by the COLDGASS survey (Saintonge et al. 2011a,b), the H2 depletion time, defined as tdep,H2 = MH2 Ṁ∗ , (15) is continuously rather than bimodally distributed, and the data occupy the full range of values between the sequences of disks and starbursts identified by…”
Star formation in semi-analytic galaxy formation models with multiphase gas (2015, background): “Saintonge et al. (2011) find that in the COLD GASS sample, tdep,H2 is weakly correlated with the galaxy stellar mass and stellar surface density, and rather strongly (anti-) correlated with sSFR.”
The effect of the environment on the Hi scaling relations (2011, background): “Hi masses are obtained from the total gas mass by removing the contribution of helium and heavy elements (i.e., a factor 1.36) and assuming a molecular-to-atomic hydrogen gas ratio of 0.38, independent of stellar mass (Saintonge et al. 2011).”
THE EVOLVING INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 AS PROBED BY THEIR INFRARED SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS (2012, result): “The z ∼ 2 sources are drawn from the BzK– Dust and Gas in Star Forming Galaxies to z = 2 5 selected sample of Daddi et al. (2007; now extended to deeper K-band depths by Pannella et al. in prep.).”
THE ARECIBO LEGACY FAST ALFA SURVEY: THE GALAXY POPULATION DETECTED BY ALFALFA (2012, background): “Such estimates have overall larger uncertainties among the red-sequence galaxies relative to the blue cloud ones (e.g. Saintonge et al. 2011b), and contribute to the SFR uncertainties.”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “Instead we account for molecular hydrogen using the observed scaling between atomic and molecular gas mass derived as part of the COLD GASS survey (Saintonge et al. 2011) conducted using the IRAM 30 m telescope.”
Molecular and atomic gas along and across the main sequence of star-forming galaxies (2016, methodology): “Comparing the values ofS FRtot with the measurements from optical-UV SED fitting (Saintonge et al. 2011b) reveals no systematic offset and a 0.3 dex scatter, in complete agreement with Huang & Kauffmann(2014) who also derived SFRs based on GALEXandWISEphotometry for COLD GASS galaxies.”
Cosmic evolution of the atomic and molecular gas contents of galaxies (2011, background): “…have been reported for the atomic and molecular gas contents in a homogeneous sample of relatively massive galaxies by Catinella et al. (2010) and Saintonge et al. (2011), respectively, with the aim of establishing fundamental relations between the stellar content of galaxies and their cold gas…”
Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, methodology): “Th difference in slope is more pronunced when, consistently with Saintonge et al. (2011a), the fit is done on molecular gas masses determined assuming a constantXCO11.”
Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4 (2013, background): “For comparison, the yellow solid circles show the average gas fractions of local massive galaxies (with M > 1010 M ) in bins of stellar mass, whose gas content has been measured by Saintonge et al. (2011) through direct CO observations.”