期刊
COMMUNICATIONS PHYSICS
卷 3, 期 1, 页码 -出版社
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/s42005-020-00493-0
关键词
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资金
- Swiss National Science Foundation [157591, 194814]
- Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) [s926, uzh18]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Japanese Monbukagakusho
- Max Planck Society
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- American Museum of Natural History
- Astrophysical Institute Potsdam
- University of Basel
- University of Cambridge
- Case Western Reserve University
- University of Chicago
- Drexel University
- Fermilab
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Japan Participation Group
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Korean Scientist Group
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA)
- Ohio State University
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- United States Naval Observatory
- University of Washington
- New Mexico State University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
How galaxies form their stars has been extensively studied but the role of the galactic gas content and the efficiency of its conversion into stars remain to be fully understood. Here the author presents a data-driven statistical analysis that reduces potential biases related to non-detections to quantify the link between star formation, molecular, and neutral gas in nearby galaxies. Observations of the interstellar medium are key to deciphering the physical processes regulating star formation in galaxies. However, observational uncertainties and detection limits can bias the interpretation unless carefully modeled. Here I re-analyze star formation rates and gas masses of a representative sample of nearby galaxies with the help of multi-dimensional Bayesian modeling. Typical star forming galaxies are found to lie in a 'star forming plane' largely independent of their stellar mass. Their star formation activity is tightly correlated with the molecular and total gas content, while variations of the molecular-gas-to-star conversion efficiency are shown to be significantly smaller than previously reported. These data-driven findings suggest that physical processes that modify the overall galactic gas content, such as gas accretion and outflows, regulate the star formation activity in typical nearby galaxies, while a change in efficiency triggered by, e.g., galaxy mergers or gas instabilities, may boost the activity of starbursts.
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