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We present a¹²CO(J= 2−1) survey of 60 local galaxies using data from the Atacama Compact Array as part of the Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution: the ACA EDGE survey. These galaxies all have integral field spectroscopy from the CALIFA survey. Compared to other local galaxy surveys, ACA EDGE is designed to mitigate selection effects based on CO brightness and morphological type. Of the 60 galaxies in ACA EDGE, 36 are on the star formation main sequence, 13 are on the red sequence, and 11 lie in the “green valley” transition between these sequences. We test how star formation quenching processes affect the star formation rate (SFR) per unit molecular gas mass, SFE_mol= SFR/M_mol, and related quantities in galaxies with stellar masses 10 ≤ log[M_⋆/M_⊙] ≤ 11.5 covering the full range of morphological types. We observe a systematic decrease of the molecular-to-stellar mass fraction ($R_{\star }^{\mathrm{mol}}$) with a decreasing level of star formation activity, with green valley galaxies also having lower SFE_molthan galaxies on the main sequence. On average, we find that the spatially resolved SFE_molwithin the bulge region of green valley galaxies is lower than in the bulges of main-sequence galaxies if we adopt a constant CO-to-H₂conversion factor,α_CO. While efficiencies in main-sequence galaxies remain almost constant with galactocentric radius, in green valley galaxies, we note a systematic increase of SFE_mol,$R_{\star }^{\mathrm{mol}}$, and specific SFR with increasing radius. As shown in previous studies, our results suggest that although gas depletion (or removal) seems to be the most important driver of the star formation quenching in galaxies transiting through the green valley, a reduction in star formation efficiency is also required during this stage.

 

The EDGE-CALIFA survey provides spatially resolved optical integral-field unit and CO spectroscopy for 125 galaxies selected from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area Survey (CALIFA) Data Release 3 sample. The Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (EDGE) presents the spatially resolved products of the survey as pixel tables that reduce the oversampling in the original images and facilitate comparison of pixels from different images. By joining these pixel tables to lower-dimensional tables that provide radial profiles, integrated spectra, or global properties, it is possible to investigate the dependence of local conditions on large-scale properties. The database is freely accessible and has been utilized in several publications. We illustrate the use of this database and highlight the effects of CO upper limits on the inferred slopes of the local scaling relations between the stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), and H₂surface densities. We find that the correlation between H₂and SFR surface density is the tightest among the three relations.

 

We present¹³CO(J= 1 → 0) observations for the EDGE-CALIFA survey, which is a mapping survey of 126 nearby galaxies at a typical spatial resolution of 1.5 kpc. Using detected¹²CO emission as a prior, we detect¹³CO in 41 galaxies via integrated line flux over the entire galaxy and in 30 galaxies via integrated line intensity in resolved synthesized beams. Incorporating our CO observations and optical IFU spectroscopy, we perform a systematic comparison between the line ratio${\mathit{}}_{12/13}\equiv I{[}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=1\to 0)]/I{[}^{13}\mathrm{CO}(J=1\to 0)]$and the properties of the stars and ionized gas. Higher${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$values are found in interacting galaxies compared to those in noninteracting galaxies. The global${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$slightly increases with infrared colorF₆₀/F₁₀₀but appears insensitive to other host-galaxy properties such as morphology, stellar mass, or galaxy size. We also present azimuthally averaged${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$profiles for our sample up to a galactocentric radius of 0.4r₂₅(∼6 kpc), taking into account the¹³CO nondetections by spectral stacking. The radial profiles of${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$are quite flat across our sample. Within galactocentric distances of 0.2r₂₅, the azimuthally averaged${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$increases with the star formation rate. However, Spearman rank correlation tests show the azimuthally averaged${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$does not strongly correlate with any other gas or stellar properties in general, especially beyond 0.2r₂₅from the galaxy centers. Our findings suggest that in the complex environments in galaxy disks,${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$is not a sensitive tracer for ISM properties. Dynamical disturbances, like galaxy interactions or the presence of a bar, also have an overall impact on${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$, which further complicates the interpretations of${\mathit{}}_{12/13}$variations.

 

Shocks and torques produced by non-axisymmetric structures such as spiral arms and bars may transport gas to galaxy central regions. We test this hypothesis by studying the dependence of the concentration of CO luminosity ( C CO ) and molecular gas ( C mol ) and the star formation rate ( C SFR ) in the central ∼2 kpc on the strength of non-axisymmetric disk structure using a sample of 57 disk galaxies selected from the EDGE-CALIFA survey. The C mol is calculated using a CO-to-H 2 conversion factor that decreases with higher metallicity and higher stellar surface density. We find that C mol is systematically 0.22 dex lower than C CO . We confirm that high C mol and strong non-axisymmetric disk structure are more common in barred galaxies than in unbarred galaxies. However, we find that spiral arms also increase C mol . We show that there is a good correlation between C mol and the strength of non-axisymmetric structure (which can be due to a bar, spiral arms, or both). This suggests that the stronger the bars and spirals, the more efficient the galaxy is at transporting cold gas to its center. Despite the small subsample size, the C mol of the four Seyferts are not significantly reduced compared to inactive galaxies of similar disk structure, implying that the active galactic nucleus feedback in Seyferts may not notably affect the molecular gas distribution in the central ∼2 kpc. We find that C SFR tightly correlates with C mol in both unbarred and barred galaxies. Likewise, elevated C SFR is found in galaxies with strong disk structure. Our results suggest that the disk structure, either spirals or bars, can transport gas to the central regions, with higher inflow rates corresponding to stronger structure, and consequently boost central star formation. Both spirals and bars play, therefore, an essential role in the secular evolution of disk galaxies. 

We measure the molecular-to-atomic gas ratio,R_mol, and the star formation rate (SFR) per unit molecular gas mass, SFE_mol, in 38 nearby galaxies selected from the Virgo Environment Traced in CO (VERTICO) survey. We stack ALMA¹²CO (J= 2−1) spectra coherently using Hivelocities from the VIVA survey to detect faint CO emission out to galactocentric radiir_gal∼ 1.2r₂₅. We determine the scale lengths for the molecular and stellar components, finding a ∼3:5 relation compared to ∼1:1 in field galaxies, indicating that the CO emission is more centrally concentrated than the stars. We computeR_molas a function of different physical quantities. While the spatially resolvedR_molon average decreases with increasing radius, we find that the mean molecular-to-atomic gas ratio within the stellar effective radiusR_e,R_mol(r<R_e), shows a systematic increase with the level of Hi, truncation and/or asymmetry (H_Iperturbation). Analysis of the molecular- and the atomic-to-stellar mass ratios withinR_e,$R_{\star }^{\mathrm{mol}}(r<R_e)$and$R_{\star }^{\mathrm{atom}}(r<R_e)$, shows that VERTICO galaxies have increasingly lower$R_{\star }^{\mathrm{atom}}(r<R_e)$for larger levels of H_Iperturbation (compared to field galaxies matched in stellar mass), but no significant change in$R_{\star }^{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{l}}(r<R_e)$. We also measure a clear systematic decrease of the SFE_molwithinR_e, SFE_mol(r<R_e), with increasingly perturbed Hi. Therefore, compared to field galaxies from the field, VERTICO galaxies are more compact in CO emission in relation to their stellar distribution, but increasingly perturbed atomic gas increases theirR_moland decreases the efficiency with which their molecular gas forms stars.

 

We explore the relationship between mid-infrared (mid-IR) and CO rotational line emission from massive star-forming galaxies, which is one of the tightest scalings in the local universe. We assemble a large set of unresolved and moderately (∼1 kpc) spatially resolved measurements of CO (1–0) and CO (2–1) intensity,I_CO, and mid-IR intensity,I_MIR, at 8, 12, 22, and 24μm. TheI_COversusI_MIRrelationship is reasonably described by a power law with slopes 0.7–1.2 and normalizationI_CO∼ 1 K km s⁻¹atI_MIR∼ 1 MJy sr⁻¹. Both the slopes and intercepts vary systematically with choice of line and band. The comparison between the relations measured for CO (1–0) and CO (2–1) allow us to infer that$R_{21}\propto I_{\mathrm{MIR}}^{0.2}$, in good agreement with other work. The 8μm and 12μm bands, with strong polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features, show steeper CO versus mid-IR slopes than the 22 and 24μm, consistent with PAH emission arising not just from CO-bright gas but also from atomic or CO-dark gas. The CO-to-mid-IR ratio correlates with global galaxy stellar mass (M_⋆) and anticorrelates with star formation rate/M_⋆. At ∼1 kpc resolution, the first four PHANGS–JWST targets show CO-to-mid-IR relationships that are quantitatively similar to our larger literature sample, including showing the steep CO-to-mid-IR slopes for the JWST PAH-tracing bands, although we caution that these initial data have a small sample size and span a limited range of intensities.

 

We present an empirical relation between the cold gas surface density (Σgas) and the optical extinction (AV) in a sample of 103 galaxies from the Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (EDGE) survey. This survey provides CARMA interferometric CO observations for 126 galaxies included in the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. The matched, spatially resolved nature of these data sets allows us to derive the Σgas–AV relation on global, radial, and kpc (spaxel) scales. We determine AV from the Balmer decrement (H α/H β). We find that the best fit for this relation is $\Sigma _{\rm gas}\,(\rm {M_\odot \,pc}^{-2}) \sim 26 \times {\rm \mathit{ A}_\mathit{ V}} \,(\rm mag)$, and that it does not depend on the spatial scale used for the fit. However, the scatter in the fits increases as we probe smaller spatial scales, reflecting the complex relative spatial distributions of stars, gas, and dust. We investigate the Σgas/AV ratio on radial and spaxel scales as a function of $\mathrm{EW(H\,\alpha)}$. We find that at larger values of $\mathrm{EW({H\,\alpha })}$ (i.e. actively star-forming regions) this ratio tends to converge to twice the value expected for a foreground dust screen geometry (∼30 $\mathrm{M_{\odot } \, pc^{-2} \, mag^{-1}}$). On radial scales, we do not find a significant relation between the Σgas/AV ratio and the ionized gas metallicity. We contrast our estimates of Σgas using AV with compilations in the literature of the gas fraction on global and radial scales as well as with well-known scaling relations such as the radial star formation law and the Σgas–Σ* relation. These tests show that optical extinction is a reliable proxy for estimating Σgas in the absence of direct sub/millimeter observations of the cold gas.