The extended molecular gas of the Circinus galaxy and NGC 1097 as seen by APEX

TL;DR

This study uses APEX telescope line emission maps to reveal extensive molecular gas structures in the Circinus galaxy and NGC 1097, providing insights into their large-scale gas dynamics and interactions.

Contribution

First detailed large-scale molecular gas maps of Circinus and NGC 1097, revealing structures beyond central regions and demonstrating APEX's capabilities for galaxy evolution studies.

Findings

Detected molecular gas at largest extents for both galaxies.

Identified bar-like structure in Circinus and tidal gas in NGC 1097.

Quantified total CO luminosities and molecular gas masses.

Abstract

The outer region of the interstellar medium (ISM) is witness to dynamically important events in a galaxy's evolutionary history such as outflows, inflows, tidal interactions, and mergers, as well as dynamical structures affecting its current evolution such as bars and spiral arms. Studying imprints of these processes in the diffuse, extended molecular gas is best achieved by a single dish telescope which can cover a large field of view with good sensitivity to large-scale structures. In this work we present results from APEX line emission maps of two nearby galaxies: the Circinus galaxy in the CO(3-2) transition, and NGC 1097 in CO(2-1), covering their full optical extents. We detect gas at the largest extents seen for these galaxies yet, at 5$^{\prime}$ ($r \approx 6$ kpc) for the Circinus galaxy, and $4^{\prime}.5$ ($r \approx 18$ kpc) for NGC 1097, and compute total CO luminosities of $L^{\prime}_{\mathrm{CO(3-2)}} = (1.5\pm0.4)\times10^{8}$ K km s$^{-1}$ pc$^{2}$ and $L^{\prime}_{\mathrm{CO(2-1)}} = (7.0\pm1.7)\times10^{8}$ K km s$^{-1}$ pc$^{2}$, corresponding to molecular gas masses of $(2.1\pm1.0)\times10^{9}$ M$_{\odot}$ and $(4.7\pm1.9)\times10^{9}$ M$_{\odot}$, respectively. We further analyze the large-scale gas kinematics via PV diagrams and tilted ring modeling using $^{\mathrm{3D}}$BAROLO. We detect notable features in both galaxies beyond the well-studied central regions: in the Circinus galaxy we detect molecular gas embedded in a bar-like structure, whose kinematic signature is also evident in the major axis PV diagram, and in NGC 1097, we observe tidal molecular gas involved in the interaction of NGC 1097 with the companion galaxy NGC 1097A. The clear detection of such molecular gas structures shows promise in conducting large-scale molecular gas studies toward nearby galaxies with APEX and, in the future, the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST).