Do Post-Starburst Galaxies Host Compact Molecular Gas Reservoirs?

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution ALMA data to analyze the molecular gas reservoirs in post-starburst galaxies, revealing their sizes, potential evolutionary links, and star formation efficiencies, challenging previous notions of their gas compactness.

Contribution

It provides the first resolved measurements of CO emission in eight gas-rich PSBs, showing their gas reservoirs are larger than previously thought and comparable to those in LIRGs and early-type galaxies.

Findings

CO sizes are typically around 0.8 kpc, larger than unresolved estimates.

CO-to-stellar size ratio correlates with gas depletion time.

Star formation efficiency aligns with normal star-forming galaxies.

Abstract

We analysed the high-resolution (up to $\sim$0.2") ALMA CO (2-1) and 1.3 mm dust continuum data of eight gas-rich post-starburst galaxies (PSBs) in the local Universe, six of which had been studied by Smercina et al. (2022). In contrast to this study reporting the detections of extraordinarily compact (i.e., unresolved) reservoirs of molecular gas in the six PSBs, our visibility-plane analysis resolves the CO (2-1) emission in all eight PSBs with effective radii ($R_\mathrm{e,CO}$) of $0.8_{-0.4}^{+0.9}$ kpc, typically consisting of gaseous components at both circumnuclear and extended disc scales. With this new analysis, we find that the CO sizes of gas-rich PSBs are compact with respect to their stellar sizes (median ratio $=0.43_{-0.21}^{+0.27}$), but comparable to the sizes of the gas discs seen in local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) and early-type galaxies. We also find that the CO-to-stellar size ratio of gas-rich PSBs is potentially correlated with the gas depletion time scale, placing them as transitional objects between LIRGs and early-type galaxies from an evolutionary perspective. Finally, the star formation efficiency of the observed PSBs appear consistent with those of star-forming galaxies on the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation, showing no sign of suppressed star formation from turbulent heating.