Spatially extended and high-velocity dispersion molecular component in spiral galaxies: single-dish vs. interferometric observations

TL;DR

This study compares single-dish and interferometric observations of molecular gas in two spiral galaxies, revealing a diffuse, high-velocity dispersion component that is spatially extended and often filtered out by interferometers.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of molecular gas components in spiral galaxies, highlighting the presence of a diffuse, high-velocity dispersion phase that is missed by interferometric observations.

Findings

Interferometers recover 35-74% of flux in NGC4736 and 81-92% in NGC5055.

Single-dish line widths are ~40% larger than interferometric ones for high SNR lines.

The diffuse molecular component extends over scales larger than 1 kpc, similar to atomic gas.

Abstract

Recent studies of the molecular medium in nearby galaxies have provided mounting evidence that the molecular gas can exist in two phases: one that is clumpy and organized as molecular clouds and another one that is more diffuse. This last component has a higher velocity dispersion than the clumpy one. In order to investigate these two molecular components further, we compare the fluxes and line widths of CO in NGC 4736 and NGC 5055, two nearby spiral galaxies for which high-quality interferometric as well as single-dish data sets are available. Our analysis leads to two main results: 1) Employing three different methods, we determine the flux recovery of the interferometer as compared to the single-dish to be within a range of 35-74% for NGC4736 and 81-92% for NGC5055, and 2) when focusing on high (SNR>5) lines of sight, the single-dish line widths are larger by ~(40+-20)% than the ones derived from interferometric data; which is in agreement with stacking all lines of sight. These results point to a molecular gas component that is distributed over spatial scales larger than 30"(~1kpc), and is therefore filtered out by the interferometer. The available observations do not allow us to distinguish between a truly diffuse gas morphology and a uniform distribution of small clouds that are separated by less than the synthesized beam size (~3" or ~100pc), as they would both be invisible for the interferometer. This high velocity dispersion component has a dispersion similar to what is found in the atomic medium, as traced through observations of the HI line.