The Gas Morphology of Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies

TL;DR

This study classifies the molecular gas morphology of 79 nearby star-forming galaxies using high-resolution ALMA observations, revealing correlations with galaxy features and providing a comprehensive catalog of gas-based morphological types.

Contribution

It introduces a new gas-based morphological classification scheme for galaxy features like bars and spiral arms, and compares these with optical classifications, highlighting potential misidentifications.

Findings

Gas morphologies generally agree with optical light classifications.

Bars and grand-design spirals are more common in higher-mass galaxies.

Central rings are present in a third of the sample, mostly in barred galaxies.

Abstract

The morphology of a galaxy stems from secular and environmental processes during its evolutionary history. Thus galaxy morphologies have been a long used tool to gain insights on galaxy evolution. We visually classify morphologies on cloud-scales based on the molecular gas distribution of a large sample of 79 nearby main-sequence galaxies, using 1'' resolution CO(2-1) ALMA observations taken as part of the PHANGS survey. To do so, we devise a morphology classification scheme for different types of bars, spiral arms (grand-design, flocculent, multi-arm and smooth), rings (central and non-central rings) similar to the well-established optical ones, and further introduce bar lane classes. In general, our cold gas based morphologies agree well with the ones based on stellar light. Both our bars as well as grand-design spiral arms are preferentially found at the higher mass end of our sample. Our gas-based classification indicates a potential for misidentification of unbarred galaxies in the optical when massive star formation is present. Central or nuclear rings are present in a third of the sample with a strong preferences for barred galaxies (59%). As stellar bars are present in 45$\pm$5% of our sample galaxies, we explore the utility of molecular gas as tracer of bar lane properties. We find that more curved bar lanes have a shorter radial extent in molecular gas and reside in galaxies with lower molecular to stellar mass ratios than those with straighter geometries. Galaxies display a wide range of CO morphology, and this work provides a catalogue of morphological features in a representative sample of nearby galaxies.