Central star formation in double-peak gas rich radio galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates double-peak emission line galaxies, revealing that recent minor mergers likely drive central star formation enhancements and increased molecular gas content, with implications for galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence linking minor mergers to central star formation and molecular gas dynamics in double-peak galaxies.

Findings

Double-peak galaxies have more molecular gas and longer depletion times.

Central star formation is likely merger-induced, not due to bar-driven gas inflow.

Radio continuum correlates linearly with CO luminosity across frequencies.

Abstract

In a recent work, a large sample of double-peak (DP) emission line galaxies have been identified from the SDSS. While the two peaks could represent two kinematic components, they may be linked to the large bulges which their host galaxies tend to have. Star-forming DP galaxies display a central star formation enhancement and have been discussed to be compatible with a sequence of recent minor mergers. In order to probe merger induced star formation mechanisms, we conducted observations of the molecular gas content of 35 star-forming DP galaxies in the upper part of the main sequence (MS) of star formation with the IRAM 30m telescope. Including similar galaxies 0.3 dex above MS and with existing molecular gas observations from the literature, we finally obtain a sample of 52 such galaxies. We succeed in fitting the same kinematic parameters to the optical ionised and molecular gas emission lines for 10 (19%) galaxies. We find a central star formation enhancement resulting most likely from a galaxy merger or galaxy interaction, which is indicated by an excess of gas extinction found in the centre. This star formation is traced by radio continuum emissions at 150MHz, 1.4 and 3GHz, which are all three linearly correlated in log with the CO luminosity with the same slope. The 52 DP galaxies are found to have a significantly larger amount of molecular gas and larger depletion times, hence a lower star formation efficiency, than the expected values at their distance of the MS. This is consistent with a scenario of minor mergers increasing the mass of bulges and driving gas to the centre. We also exclude the inwards directed gas migration and central star formation enhancement to be the origin of a bar morphology. Hence, these 52 DP galaxies could be the results of recent minor mergers that funnelled molecular gas towards their centre, triggering star formation, but with a moderate efficiency.