论文标题
恒星形成与附近星系中气体之间的联系
The link between star formation and gas in nearby galaxies
论文作者
论文摘要
对星际介质的观察是破译星系中恒星形成的物理过程的关键。但是，除非经过精心建模，否则观察性的不确定性和检测极限可能会偏向解释。在这里，我在多维贝叶斯建模的帮助下重新分析了附近星系的代表性样本的恒星形成率和气体质量。发现典型的恒星形成星系位于“恒星形成平面”中，主要与其恒星质量无关。它们的恒星形成活性与分子和总气体含量密切相关，而分子气体到明星转化效率的变化显示出明显小于先前报道的。这些数据驱动的发现表明，修改整体银河气体含量（例如气体积聚和流出）的物理过程调节典型的附近星系中的星形形成活动，而效率的变化是由银河合并或气体不稳定性触发的，可能会增强星际爆炸活动的活性。
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.
