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Unpublished Paper
Early Science with the Large Millimeter Telescope: Exploring the Effect of AGN Activity on the Relationships Between Molecular Gas Dust and Star Formation
Astrophysical Journal (2014)
  • Allison Kirkpatrick
  • Alexandra Pope
  • Itziar Aretxaca
  • Lee Armus
  • Daniela Calzetti
  • George Helou
  • Alfredo Montana
  • Gopal Narayanan, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • F. Peter Schloerb
  • Young Shi
  • Olga Vega
  • Min Yun
Abstract
The molecular gas, H2, that fuels star formation in galaxies is difficult to observe directly. As such, the ratio of LIR to is an observational estimate of the star formation rate compared with the amount of molecular gas available to form stars, which is related to the star formation efficiency and the inverse of the gas consumption timescale. We test what effect an IR luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) has on the ratio in a sample of 24 intermediate redshift galaxies from the 5 mJy Unbiased Spitzer Extragalactic Survey (5MUSES). We obtain new CO(1–0) observations with the Redshift Search Receiver on the Large Millimeter Telescope. We diagnose the presence and strength of an AGN using Spitzer IRS spectroscopy. We find that removing the AGN contribution to results in a mean for our entire sample consistent with the mean derived for a large sample of star forming galaxies from z  ~  0–3. We also include in our comparison the relative amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission for our sample and a literature sample of local and high-redshift ultra luminous infrared galaxies and find a consistent trend between and , such that small dust grain emission decreases with increasing for both local and high-redshift dusty galaxies.
Publication Date
2014
Comments
Prepublished version downloaded from ArXiv. Published version is located at http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/796/2/135/article
Citation Information
Allison Kirkpatrick, Alexandra Pope, Itziar Aretxaca, Lee Armus, et al.. "Early Science with the Large Millimeter Telescope: Exploring the Effect of AGN Activity on the Relationships Between Molecular Gas Dust and Star Formation" Astrophysical Journal (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gopal_narayanan/1/