Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The matter cycle between gas clouds and stars in galaxies plays a crucial role in regulating galaxy evolution through feedback mechanisms. In turn, the local and global galactic environments shape the interstellar medium and provide the initial conditions for star formation, potentially affecting the properties of this small-scale matter cycle. In particular, spiral arms have been proposed to play a pivotal role in the star formation life cycle, by enhancing the gas density and triggering star formation. However, their exact role is still debated. In this study, we investigated the role of spiral arms in the giant molecular cloud evolutionary life cycle and on the star formation process in a sample of 22 nearby spiral galaxies from the PHANGS survey. We measured the cloud lifetime, the feedback timescale, the typical distance between independent regions, and the star formation efficiency in spiral arms and inter-arm regions separately. We find that the distributions of the cloud lifetime as well as the feedback timescale are similar in both environments. This result suggests that spiral arms are unlikely to play a dominant role in triggering star formation. By contrast, the star formation efficiency appears to be slightly higher in inter-arm regions compared to spiral arms.
Authors: Andrea Romanelli, Mélanie Chevance, J. M. Diederik Kruijssen, Lise Ramambason, Miguel Querejeta, Mederic Boquien, Daniel A. Dale, Jakob den Brok, Simon C. O. Glover, Kathryn Grasha, Annie Hughes, Jaeyeon Kim, Steven Longmore, Sharon E. Meidt, José Eduardo Mendez-Delgado, Lukas Neumann, Jérôme Pety, Eva Schinnerer, Rowan Smith, Jiayi Sun, Thomas G. Williams
Institutions: Heidelberg University, Technical University of Munich, Spanish National Observatory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Côte d'Azur, Lagrange Laboratory, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, University of Wyoming, Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, Australian National University, Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Liverpool John Moores University, Ghent University, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, European Southern Observatory, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Université, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, University of St Andrews, Princeton University, University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Space Telescope Science Institute, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, European Commission, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Agencia Estatal de Investigación
Awards: G1380005828, Detailed Analysis Of the Inter-Stellar Medium, G2262748287, G2340603345, G2721487110, G2956490128, G3480869486, G3681454997, G4042783231, G425668148, G433322167, G4442677895, G4518818167, G4526231891, G5311120658, G58316358, G586857820, G6273510985, G6526081583, G7084143925, EXC 2181: STRUKTUREN: Emergenz in Natur, Mathematik und komplexen Daten, G767601387, G775452760, G8210229802
OpenAlex ID: W6922054056
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