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Whole-disk Sampling of Molecular Clouds in M83

  • Akihiko Hirota
  • , Jin Koda
  • , Fumi Egusa
  • , Tsuyoshi Sawada
  • , Kazushi Sakamoto
  • , Mark Heyer
  • , Amanda M. Lee
  • , Fumiya Maeda
  • , Samuel Boissier
  • , Daniela Calzetti
  • , Bruce G. Elmegreen
  • , Nanase Harada
  • , Luis C. Ho
  • , Masato I.N. Kobayashi
  • , Nario Kuno
  • , Barry F. Madore
  • , Sergio Martín
  • , Jennifer Donovan Meyer
  • , Kazuyuki Muraoka
  • , Yoshimasa Watanabe

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a catalog of clouds identified from the 12CO (1-0) data of M83, which was observed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array with a spatial resolution of ∼46 pc and a mass sensitivity of ∼104 M (3σ). The almost full-disk coverage and high sensitivity of the data allowed us to sample 5724 molecular clouds with a median mass of ∼1.9 × 105 M , which is comparable to the most frequently sampled mass of giant molecular clouds by surveys in the Milky Way (MW). About 60% of the total CO luminosity in M83's disk arises from clouds more massive than 106 M . Such massive clouds comprise 16% of the total clouds in number and tend to concentrate toward the arm, bar, and center, while smaller clouds are more prevalent in interarm regions. Most >106 M clouds have peak brightness temperatures T peak above 2 K with the current resolution. Comparing the observed cloud properties with the scaling relations determined by P. M. Solomon et al. (1987, hereafter S87), T peak > 2 K clouds follow the relations, but T peak < 2 K clouds, which are dominant in number, deviate significantly. Without considering the effect of beam dilution, the deviations would suggest modestly high virial parameters (median α vir ∼ 2.7) and low surface mass densities (median Σ ∼ 22 M pc−2) for the entire cloud samples, which are similar to values found for the MW clouds by T. S. Rice et al. (2016) and M.-A Miville-Deschênes et al. (2017). However, once beam dilution is taken into account, the observed α vir and Σ for a majority of the clouds (mostly T peak <2 K) can be potentially explained with intrinsic Σ of ∼100 M pc−2 and α vir of ∼1, which are similar to the clouds of S87.

Original languageEnglish
Article number198
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume976
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2024

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