CO observations of major merger pairs at

Ute Lisenfeld
Cong Kevin Xu
Yu Gao
Donovan L. Domingue
Chen Cao
Min S. Yun
Pei Zuo

Open link

Publication date

July 2019

DOI

10.1051/0004-6361/201935536

Publisher

EDP Sciences

Abstract

We present CO observations of 78 spiral galaxies in local merger pairs. These galaxies represent a subsample of a Ks-band-selected sample consisting of 88 close major-merger pairs (HKPAIRs), 44 spiral–spiral (S+S) pairs, and 44 spiral–elliptical (S+E) pairs, with separation <20 h−1 kpc and mass ratio <2.5. For all objects, the star formation rate (SFR) and dust mass were derived from Herschel PACS and SPIRE data, and the atomic gas mass, MHI, from the Green Bank Telescope HI observations. The complete data set allows us to study the relation between gas (atomic and molecular) mass, dust mass, and SFR in merger galaxies. We derive the molecular gas fraction (MH2/M*), molecular-to-atomic gas mass ratio (MH2/MHI), gas-to-dust mass ratio and SF...