# ALMA observations of N83C in the early stage of star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud

## TL;DR

This study uses ALMA to observe molecular structures in N83C, a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing details about gas density, molecular cloud structure, and star formation in a low-metallicity environment.

## Contribution

First high-resolution ALMA observations of N83C revealing sub-pc molecular structures and detailed analysis of gas properties in a low-metallicity galaxy.

## Key findings

- Molecular structures resolved at sub-pc scale.
- High gas density (~10^4 cm^-3) in YSO-associated clouds.
- CO-to-H2 conversion factor is four times higher than in the Milky Way.

## Abstract

We have performed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations in $^{12}$CO($J=2-1$), $^{13}$CO($J=2-1$), C$^{18}$O($J=2-1$), $^{12}$CO($J=3-2$), $^{13}$CO($J=3-2$), and CS($J=7-6$) lines toward the active star-forming region N83C in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), whose metallicity is $\sim$ 1/5 of the Milky Way (MW). The ALMA observations first reveal sub-pc scale molecular structures in $^{12}$CO($J=2-1$) and $^{13}$CO($J=2-1$) emission. We found strong CO peaks associated with young stellar objects (YSOs) identified by the $Spitzer$ Space Telescope, and also found that overall molecular gas is distributed along the edge of the neighboring HII region. We derived a gas density of $\sim 10^4$ cm$^{-3}$ in molecular clouds associated with YSOs based on the virial mass estimated from $^{12}$CO($J=2-1$) emission. This high gas density is presumably due to the effect of the HII region under the low-metallicity (accordingly small-dust content) environment in the SMC; far-UV radiation from the HII region can easily penetrate and photo-dissociate the outer layer of $^{12}$CO molecules in the molecular clouds, and thus only the innermost parts of the molecular clouds are observed even in $^{12}$CO emission. We obtained the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor $X_{\rm CO}$ of $7.5 \times 10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$ (K km s$^{-1}$)$^{-1}$ in N83C based on virial masses and CO luminosities, which is four times larger than that in the MW, 2 $\times 10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$ (K km s$^{-1}$)$^{-1}$. We also discuss the difference in the nature between two high-mass YSOs, each of which is associated with a molecular clump with a mass of about a few $\times 10^3 M_{\odot}$.