HIghMass—High H I Mass, H I-rich Galaxies at z ~ 0: Combined H I and H_2 Observations

Creators: Hallenbeck, Gregory; Huang, Shan; Spekkens, Kristine; Haynes, Martha P.; Giovanelli, Riccardo; Adams, Elizabeth A. K.; Brinchmann, Jarle; Carpenter, John; Chengalur, Jayaram; Hunt, Leslie K.; Masters, Karen L.; Saintonge, Amélie

Abstract

We present resolved and CO observations of three galaxies from the HIghMass sample, a sample of -massive (M_(H I) > 10^(10) M⊙), gas-rich (M_(H I) in the top 5% for their M *) galaxies identified in the ALFALFA survey. Despite their high gas fractions, these are not low-surface-brightness galaxies and have typical specific star formation rates (SFR/M*) for their stellar masses. The three galaxies have normal SFRs for their masses, but unusually short star formation efficiency scale lengths, indicating that the star formation bottleneck in these galaxies is in the conversion of H I to H_2, not in converting H_2 to stars. In addition, their dark matter spin parameters (λ) are above average, but not exceptionally high, suggesting that their star formation has been suppressed over cosmic time but is now becoming active, in agreement with prior Hα observations.

Additional Information

© 2016 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 June 30; revised 2016 September 18; accepted 2016 September 27; published 2016 December 7. This work has been supported by NSF-AST-0606007 and AST-1107390, NASA/JPL Spitzer RSA/73350, grants from the Brinson Foundation, and a Student Observing Support award from NRAO. This work is based in part on observations made with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wavelength Astronomy (CARMA). Support for CARMA construction was derived from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Associates of the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the states of California, Illinois, and Maryland, and the National Science Foundation. CARMA development and operations were supported by the National Science Foundation under a cooperative agreement and by the CARMA partner universities. This work is based in part on observations made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, a facility of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This work is based in part on observations made with the Arecibo Observatory. The Arecibo Observatory is operated by SRI International under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (AST-1100968), and in alliance with Ana G. Méndez-Universidad Metropolitana and the Universities Space Research Association. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. This work has made use of THINGS, "The H I Nearby Galaxy Survey" (Walter et al. 2008).

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