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The EDGE-CALIFA Survey: Molecular Gas and Star Formation Activity across the Green Valley

  • Authors: Vicente Villanueva, Alberto D. Bolatto, Stuart N. Vogel, Tony Wong, Adam K. Leroy, Sebastian F. Sánchez, Rebecca C. Levy, Erik Rosolowsky, Dario Colombo, Veselina Kalinova, Serena Cronin, Peter Teuben, Mónica Rubio, Zein Bazzi

Vicente Villanueva et al 2024 The Astrophysical Journal 962 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 9.

Left: SFR surface density, ΣSFR, vs. stellar surface density, Σ, color-coded by the resolved SFE of the molecular gas, SFE = ΣSFRmol, for pixels with 5σ CO detections and selected from the 30 galaxies included in Figure 6. Blue and green density contours are 90%, 60%, and 30% of the points for main-sequence and green valley galaxies. Right: the resolved SFR–M mol relation, color-coded by the resolved molecular-to-stellar mass gas fraction, ﹩{{rR}}_{\star }^{\mathrm{mol}}={{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{mol}}/{{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\star }﹩. Conventions are the same as in the left panel. The black dashed lines correspond to the OLS bisector fit for main-sequence galaxies using the model y = α x + β for the rSFMS (left) and the rKS (right) relations. While the left panel exhibits an increase in Σ for pixels transiting from the main sequence to the green valley, the right panel shows that pixels from these two populations cover a similar parameter space, although with a mild decrease in ΣSFR. This suggests that changes in star formation activity during the transition are driven not only by a lowering of the molecular gas but also a decrease of the SFE.

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