Related papers: The essential signature of a massive starburst in …
We present a search for HCN emission from four high redshift far infrared (IR) luminous galaxies. Current data and models suggest that these high $z$ IR luminous galaxies represent a major starburst phase in the formation of spheroidal…
Observations have revealed prodigious amounts of star formation in starburst galaxies as traced by dust and molecular emission, even at large redshifts. Recent work shows that for both nearby spiral galaxies and distant starbursts, the…
Both Galactic and extragalactic studies on star formation suggest that stars form directly from dense molecular gas. To trace such high volume density gas, HCN and HCO+ J=1-0 have been widely used for their high dipole moments, relatively…
There is substantial evidence for a connection between star formation in the nuclear region of a galaxy and growth of the central supermassive black hole. Furthermore, starburst activity in the region around an active galactic nucleus (AGN)…
We report results of a project to map HCN and HCO+ J = 1-0 emission toward a sample of molecular clouds in the inner Galaxy, all containing dense clumps that are actively engaged in star formation. We compare these two molecular line…
Recent observations reveal galaxies in the early Universe (2<z<6.4) with large reservoirs of molecular gas and extreme star formation rates. For a very large range of sources, a tight relationship exists between star formation rate and the…
Molecular hydrogen is an important component of galaxies because it fuels star formation and accretion onto AGN, the two processes that generate the large infrared luminosities of gas-rich galaxies. Observations of spectral-line emission…
Over the last decade, observations of the cool interstellar medium in distant galaxies via molecular and atomic fine structure line emission has gone from a curious look into a few extreme, rare objects, to a mainstream tool to study galaxy…
While the best tracer of the molecular component and its dynamics in galaxies is the CO molecule, which excitation is revealed by its isotopic and (2-1)/(1-0) ratios, the denser gas is revealed by molecules such as HCN, HNC, HCO+ or CN,…
We present here the sensitive HCN(1-0) observations made with the VLA of two submillimeter galaxies and two QSOs at high-redshift. HCN emission is the signature of dense molecular gas found in GMC cores, the actual sites of massive star…
In this review, I discuss some highlights of recent research on molecular gas in galaxies; large-scale CO maps of nearby galaxies are being made, which extend our knowledge on global properties, radial gradients, and spiral structure of the…
Dense molecular gas and star formation are correlated in galaxies. The effect of low metallicity on this relationship is crucial for interpreting observations of high redshift galaxies, which have lower metallicities than galaxies today.…
We present a detailed analysis of the relation between infrared luminosity and molecular line luminosity, for a variety of molecular transitions, using a sample of 34 nearby galaxies spanning a broad range of infrared luminosities (10^{10}…
We present maps and spectra of the HCN(1-0) and HCO$^+$(1-0) lines in the extreme outer Galaxy, at galactocentric radii between 14 and 22 kpc, with the 13.7 meter Delingha telescope. The 9 molecular clouds were selected from a CO/$^{13}$CO…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are associated with the explosions of massive stars and are accordingly expected to reside in star-forming regions with molecular gas (the fuel for star formation). Previous searches for carbon monoxide (CO),…
Nearly 10 high redshift (z>2) starburst galaxies have recently been detected in the CO lines, revealing the early presence in the universe of objects with large amounts of already-enriched molecular gas. The latter has sufficient density to…
Knowledge of the molecular component of the ISM is fundamental to understand star formation. The H2 component appears to dominate the gas mass in the inner parts of galaxies, while the HI component dominates in the outer parts. Observation…
We report the detection of HCO+(1-0) emission towards the Cloverleaf quasar (z=2.56) through observations with the Very Large Array. This is the first detection of ionized molecular gas emission at high redshift (z>2). HCO+ emission is a…
Molecules that trace the high-density regions of the interstellar medium have been observed in (ultra-)luminous (far-)infrared galaxies, in order to initiate multiple-molecule multiple-transition studies to evaluate the physical and…
(abridged) In this work we have a closer look at the gas content or fraction and the associated star formation rate in main sequence and starburst galaxies at z=0 and z~1-2 by applying an analytical model of galactic clumpy gas disks to…