English

The Molecular ISM of Low Surface Brightness Spiral Galaxies

Astrophysics 2015-06-24 v1

Abstract

I summarize some results from the recent CO survey of late-type, low surface brightness (LSB) spiral galaxies by Matthews et al. (2005). We have now detected CO emission from six late-type, LSB spirals, demonstrating that despite their typical low metallicities and low mean gas surface densities, some LSB galaxies contain a molecular medium that is traced by CO. We find that the CO-detected LSB spirals adhere to the same M_H2-FIR correlation as brighter galaxies. We also find a significant drop-off in the detectability of CO among low-to-intermediate surface brightness galaxies with V_rot<~90 km/s, pointing toward fundamental changes in the physical conditions of the ISM with decreasing disk mass.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0509475,
  title  = {The Molecular ISM of Low Surface Brightness Spiral Galaxies},
  author = {L. D. Matthews},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0509475},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages; to appear in the proceedings "Island Universes - Structure and Evolution of Disk Galaxies", a conference held in Terschelling, the Netherlands, July 2005, R. S. de Jong, editor, (Springer: Dordrecht)