ALMA $\mathrm{^{13}CO}$(J=1-0) Observations of NGC 604 in M33: Physical Properties of Molecular Clouds

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to analyze the physical properties of molecular clouds in NGC 604, revealing their sizes, masses, and dynamics, and comparing them to other galaxies.

Contribution

First high-resolution ALMA observations of $^{13}CO$ in NGC 604, providing detailed measurements of molecular cloud properties in this giant HII region.

Findings

Detected 15 molecular clouds with sizes 5-21 pc.

Clouds are near virial equilibrium with high correlation.

Linewidth-size relation differs from Milky Way and NGC 300.

Abstract

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of $\mathrm{^{13}CO(J=1-0)}$ line and 104 GHz continuum emission from NGC 604, a giant HII region (GHR) in the nearby spiral galaxy M33. Our high spatial resolution images ( 3.2"$\times$ 2.4", corresponding to $13 \times 10$ pc physical scale) allow us to detect fifteen molecular clouds. We find spatial offsets between the $^{13}CO$ and 104 GHz continuum emission and also detect continuum emission near the centre of the GHR. The identified molecular clouds have sizes ranging from 5-21 pc, linewidths of 0.3-3.0 $\mathrm{kms^{-1}}$ and luminosity-derived masses of (0.4-80.5) $\times 10^3$ M$_{\bigodot}$. These molecular clouds are in near virial equilibrium, with a spearman correlation coefficient of 0.98. The linewidth-size relationship for these clouds is offset from the corresponding relations for the Milky Way and for NGC 300, although this may be an artefact of the dendrogram process.