A CO J=3-2 map of M51 with HARP-B: Radial properties of the spiral structure

TL;DR

This study provides the first complete CO J=3-2 map of M51, analyzing molecular gas properties and their variation along spiral arms and inter-arm regions on sub-kpc scales, revealing differences in gas excitation and arm-interarm contrast.

Contribution

It offers the first high-resolution CO J=3-2 map of M51 and compares it with other CO transitions to study molecular gas variations across the galaxy's spiral structure.

Findings

Arm and inter-arm CO emission vary differently with radius.

CO line ratios are highest in the galaxy center and spiral arms.

Inter-arm line ratios tend to increase with radius.

Abstract

We present the first complete CO J=3-2 map of the nearby grand-design spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194), at a spatial resolution of ~600 pc, obtained with the HARP-B instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The map covers the entire optical galaxy disk and out to the companion NGC 5195, with CO J=3-2 emission detected over an area of ~9'x6' (~21x14 kpc). We describe the CO J=3-2 integrated intensity map and combine our results with maps of CO J=2-1, CO J=1-0 and other data from the literature to investigate the variation of the molecular gas, atomic gas and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) properties of M51 as a function of distance along the spiral structure on sub-kpc scales. We find that for the CO J=3-2 and CO J=2-1 transitions there is a clear difference between the variation of arm and inter-arm emission with galactocentric radius, with the inter-arm emission relatively constant with radius and the contrast between arm and inter-arm emission decreasing with radius. For CO J=1-0 and HI the variation with radius shows a similar trend for the arm and inter-arm regions, and the arm-inter-arm contrast appears relatively constant with radius. We investigate the variation of CO line ratios (J=3-2/2-1, J=2-1/1-0 and J=3-2/1-0) as a function of distance along the spiral structure. Line ratios are consistent with the range of typical values for other nearby galaxies in the literature. The highest CO J=3-2/2-1 line ratios are found in the central ~1 kpc and in the spiral arms and the lowest line ratios in the inter-arm regions.We find no clear evidence of a trend with radius for the spiral arms but for the inter-arm regions there appears to be a trend for all CO line ratios to increase with radius. We find a strong relationship between the ratio of CO J=3-2 intensity to stellar continuum-subtracted 8mu PAH surface brightness and the CO J=3-2 intensity that appears to vary with radius.