THE PdBI ARCSECOND WHIRLPOOL SURVEY (PAWS). I. A CLOUD-SCALE/MULTI-WAVELENGTH VIEW OF THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM IN A GRAND-DESIGN SPIRAL GALAXY

By E. Schinnerer, S. Meidt, Jérome Pety, Annie Hughes, D. Colombo, S. García-Burillo, K. Schuster, G. Dumas, C. Dobbs, A. Leroy and 3 more. 2013

151 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Plateau de Bure Interferometer Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey has mapped the molecular gas in the central ∼9 kpc of M51 in its 12CO(1–0) line emission at a cloud-scale resolution of ∼40 pc using both IRAM telescopes. We utilize this data set to quantitatively characterize the relation of molecular gas (or CO emission) to other tracers of the interstellar medium, star formation, and stellar populations of varying ages. Using two-dimensional maps, a polar cross-correlation technique and pixel-by-pixel diagrams, we find: (1) that (as expected) the distribution of the molecular gas can be linked to different components of the gravitational potential; (2) evidence for a physical link between CO line emission and radio continuum that seems not to be caused by massive stars, but rather depends on the gas density; (3) a close spatial relation between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and molecular gas emission, but no predictive power of PAH emission for the molecular gas mass; (4) that the I − H color map is an excellent predictor of the distribution (and to a lesser degree, the brightness) of CO emission; and (5) that the impact of massive (UV-intense) young star-forming regions on the bulk of the molecular gas in central ∼9 kpc cannot be significant due to a complex spatial relation between molecular gas and star-forming regions that ranges from cospatial to spatially offset to absent. The last point, in particular, highlights the importance of galactic environment—and thus the underlying gravitational potential—for the distribution of molecular gas and star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/653896d54adc27db0a06994bb76f047ec3f4af45

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

1. Mark R. Krumholz
2. S. Glover
3. P. Hopkins
4. Ralf Klessen
5. E. Ostriker
6. A. Leroy
7. L. Hernquist
8. D. Narayanan

Citations in the corpus

• Cloud-scale Molecular Gas Properties in 15 Nearby Galaxies (2018, methodology): “To supplement these first PHANGS-ALMA targets, we include the PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS) CO (1–0) map of M51 (Pety et al. 2013; Schinnerer et al. 2013), which incorporates short-spacing data from the IRAM 30 m telescope.”
• The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, methodology): “For NGC5194, the combination of the PdBI with the IRAM 30-m telescope also enables the recovery of all spatial scales.”
• THE PdBI ARCSECOND WHIRLPOOL SURVEY (PAWS): ENVIRONMENTAL DEPENDENCE OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUD PROPERTIES IN M51 (2014, methodology): “In M51, young stellar clusters and enhanced atomic gas (H i, C ii) emission (Schinnerer et al. 2013) suggest that star formation is enhanced downstream of the outer density-wave spiral arms.”
• CO-dark gas and molecular filaments in Milky Way-type galaxies (2014, background): “For example, the PDBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey of CO emission in M51 (Schinnerer et al. 2013) shows long filaments and spurs coming out of the spiral arms.”
• Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, background): “Although individual molecular clouds have clearly been identified in the interarm regions of the nearby spiral M51 (Koda et al. 2009, Schinnerer et al. 2013), the ISM of that galaxy is so dominated by H2 (Walter et al. 2008, Koda et al. 2009) that mass conservation would predict that molecular…”