Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT In this paper, we report our high-resolution (0.″20 × 0.″14 or ∼70 × 49 pc) observations of the CO(6-5) line emission, which probes warm and dense molecular gas, and the 434 μm dust continuum in the nuclear region of NGC 7130, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). The CO line and dust continuum fluxes detected in our ALMA observations are 1230 ± 74 Jy km s−1 and 814 ± 52 mJy, respectively, which account for 100% and 51% of their total fluxes. We find that the CO(6-5) and dust emissions are generally spatially correlated, but their brightest peaks show an offset of ∼70 pc, suggesting that the gas and dust emissions may start decoupling at this physical scale. The brightest peak of the CO(6-5) emission does not spatially correspond to the radio continuum peak, which is likely dominated by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). This, together with our additional quantitative analysis, suggests that the heating contribution of the AGN to the CO(6-5) emission in NGC 7130 is negligible. The CO(6-5) and the extinction-corrected Pa-α maps display striking differences, suggestive of either a breakdown of the correlation between warm dense gas and star formation at linear scales of <100 pc or a large uncertainty in our extinction correction to the observed Pa-α image. Over a larger scale of ∼2.1 kpc, the double-lobed structure found in the CO(6-5) emission agrees well with the dust lanes in the optical/near-infrared images.
Source: The Astrophysical Journal
Authors: Yinghe Zhao (赵应和), Nanyao Lu, C. Kevin Xu, Yu Gao (高煜), Loreto Barcos-Munõz, Tanio Díaz-Santos, Philip Appleton, Vassilis Charmandaris, Lee Armus, Paul van der Werf, Aaron Evans, Chen Cao, Hanae Inami, Eric Murphy
Institutions: Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Yunnan Observatories, Purple Mountain Observatory, California Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Science South America Center for Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, University of Virginia, Universidad Diego Portales, University of Crete, National Observatory of Athens, Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, Leiden University, Leiden Observatory, Shandong University
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, California Institute of Technology, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Science Council, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Institutes of Natural Sciences
Awards: G1360850858, G4387751281, G964417733
OpenAlex ID: W2287442106