Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS)

The PHANGS project studies the population of nearby galaxies at high angular resolution (1") to understand how the star-forming sequence of galaxies is established by the internal physics of galactic systems. The PHANGS sample consists of 74 nearby (<17 Mpc), low-inclination systems that are being observed in a suite of tracers notably (1) complete sample coverage in molecular gas traced by CO(2-1) emission observed with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), and (2) optical integral-field spectroscopy from 20 targets using the Multi-unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Both the ALMA and the VLT/MUSE surveys are delivering their initial rounds of data. In this contribution, I will present the team's first analysis efforts. In particular, the contribution will describe the sample construction and the new imaging combined with existing multi-waveband work. The first science results from PHANGS reveal that the dynamical state of the molecular medium is remarkably consistent with being marginally self-gravitating (Sun et al., 2018) and that the star formation efficiency per free-fall time is approximately 0.7% across the sample, with real variation among galaxies (Utomo et al., 2018). Combining the MUSE and ALMA data, Kreckel et al. (2018) resolve individual molecular clouds and HII regions to show that the gas depletion times for molecular clouds in NGC 628 are much longer (>1 Gyr) than similar analyses executed in the Milky Way (~0.2 Gyr). Learn more at phangs.or