Luminous Infrared Galaxies With the Submillimeter Array. III. The Dense Kiloparsec Molecular Concentrations of Arp 299

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution molecular line observations and radiative transfer modeling to analyze the dense gas properties and rapid star formation in the luminous infrared galaxy Arp 299, revealing unusually short gas depletion times.

Contribution

It provides detailed physical characterization of molecular gas in Arp 299 using combined interferometric and single-dish data, and estimates the CO-to-H2 conversion factor in a merging galaxy.

Findings

Gas depletion times are 20-60 Myr, much shorter than in normal spirals.

The overlap region contains dense, warm gas with T_{kin} ~ 10-50 K and n(H2) ~ 10^3-10^4 cm^{-3}.

The CO-to-H2 conversion factor is estimated to be 0.4 ± 0.3 M_{sol} (K km s^{-1} pc^{2})^{-1}.

Abstract

We have used high resolution (~2.3") observations of the local (D = 46 Mpc) luminous infrared galaxy Arp 299 to map out the physical properties of the molecular gas which provides the fuel for its extreme star formation activity. The 12CO J=3-2, 12CO J=2-1 and 13CO J=2-1 lines were observed with the Submillimeter Array and the short spacings of the 12CO J=2-1 and J=3-2 observations have been recovered using James Clerk Maxwell Telescope single dish observations. We use the radiative transfer code RADEX to estimate the physical properties (density, column density and temperature) of the different regions in this system. The RADEX solutions of the two galaxy nuclei, IC 694 and NGC 3690, are consistent with a wide range of gas components, from warm moderately dense gas with T_{kin} > 30 K and n(H_{2}) ~ 0.3 - 3 x 10^{3} cm^{-3} to cold dense gas with T_{kin} ~ 10-30 K and n(H_{2}) > 3 x 10^{3} cm^{-3}. The overlap region is shown to have a better constrained solution with T_{\rm{kin}}$ ~ 10-50 K and n(H_{2}) ~ 1-30 x 10^{3} cm^{-3}. We estimate the gas masses and star formation rates of each region in order to derive molecular gas depletion times. The depletion times of all regions (20-60 Myr) are found to be about 2 orders of magnitude lower than those of normal spiral galaxies. This rapid depletion time can probably be explained by a high fraction of dense gas on kiloparsec scales in Arp 299. We estimate the CO-to-H_{2} factor, \alpha_{co} to be 0.4 \pm 0.3 (3 x 10^{-4}/ x_{CO}) M_{sol} (K km s^{-1} pc^{2})^{-1} for the overlap region. This value agrees well with values determined previously for more advanced merger systems.