Duality in spatially resolved star-formation relations in local LIRGs

TL;DR

This study reveals a duality in star formation relations within certain local LIRGs at small scales, linked to different dynamical environments, but this duality vanishes at larger scales.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of a duality in the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation at 90 pc scales in some LIRGs, connecting it to local dynamical conditions and showing scale-dependent behavior.

Findings

Duality in star formation relations at 90 pc scales in some LIRGs.

Duality linked to different dynamical environments within galaxies.

Duality disappears at scales larger than 250 pc.

Abstract

We analyse the star formation (SF) relations in a sample of 16 nearby luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) with more than 2800 regions defined on scales of 90 to 500 pc. We used ALMA to map the distribution of the cold molecular gas traced by the J = 2-1 line of CO and archival Pa\alpha HST/NICMOS imaging to trace the recent SF. In four objects, we find two different branches in the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation at 90 pc scales, suggesting the existence of a duality in this relation. The two branches correspond to two different dynamical environments within each galaxy. One branch, which corresponds to the central region of these galaxies 90% of the regions are located at radii < 0.85 kpc), shows higher gas and star formation rate surface densities with higher velocity dispersion. The other branch, which shows lower molecular gas and SF rate surface densities, corresponds to the more external disk regions (r $\sim$ 1 kpc). Despite the scatter, the SF efficiency of the galaxies with a dual behaviour increases with increasing boundedness as measured by the b parameter (b $\equiv$ $\Sigma_{H_{2}}$/$\sigma^{2}$ $\propto$ $\alpha_{vir}^{-1}$). At larger spatial scales (250 and 500 pc), the duality disappears. The rest of the sample does not show evidence of this dual behaviour at any scale.