We review progress over the past decade in observations of large-scale star formation, with a focus on the interface between extragalactic and Galactic studies. Methods of measuring gas contents and star-formation rates are discussed, and updated prescriptions for calculating star-formation rates are provided. We review relations between star formation and gas on scales ranging from entire galaxies to individual molecular clouds.

Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies

CO line emission represents the most accessible and widely used tracer of the molecular interstellar medium. This renders the translation of observed CO intensity into total H2 gas mass critical to understand star formation and the interstellar medium in our Galaxy and beyond. We review the theoretical underpinning, techniques, and results of efforts to estimate this CO-to-H2 “conversion factor,” XCO, in different environments. In the Milky Way disk, we recommend a conversion factor XCO = 2×10 20 cm −2 (K km s −1 ) −1 with ±30% uncertainty. Studies of other “normal galaxies” return similar values in Milky Way-like disks, but with greater scatter and systematic uncertainty. Departures from this Galactic conversion factor are both observed and expected. Dust-based determinations, theoretical arguments, and scaling relations all suggest that XCO increases with decreasing metallicity, turning up sharply below metallicity ≈ 1/3–1/2 solar in a manner consistent with model predictions that identify shielding as a key parameter. Based on spectral line modeling and dust observations, XCO appears to drop in the central, bright regions of some but not all galaxies, often coincident with regions of bright CO emission and high stellar surface density. This lower XCO is also present in the overwhelmingly molecular interstellar medium of starburst galaxies, where several lines of evidence point to a lower CO-to-H2 conversion factor. At high redshift, direct evidence regarding the conversion factor remains scarce; we review what is known based on dynamical modeling and other arguments. Subject headings: ISM: general — ISM: molecules — galaxies: ISM — radio lines: ISM

/pdf/the-co-to-h2-conversion-factor-26tvppkvj7.pdf

The CO-to-H2 Conversion Factor

Over the past decade, observations of the cool interstellar medium (ISM) in distant galaxies via molecular and atomic fine structure line (FSL) emission have gone from a curious look into a few extreme, rare objects to a mainstream tool for studying galaxy formation out to the highest redshifts. Molecular gas has been observed in close to 200 galaxies at z > 1, including numerous AGN host-galaxies out to z ∼ 7, highly star-forming submillimeter galaxies, and increasing samples of main-sequence color-selected star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 1.5 to 2.5. Studies have moved well beyond simple detections to dynamical imaging at kiloparsec-scale resolution and multiline, multispecies studies that determine the physical conditions in the ISM in early galaxies. Observations of the cool gas are the required complement to studies of the stellar density and star-formation history of the Universe as they reveal the phase of the ISM that immediately precedes star formation in galaxies. Current observations suggest that t...

Cool Gas in High-Redshift Galaxies

▪ Abstract The Early Universe Molecular Emission Line Galaxies (EMGs) are a population of galaxies with only 36 examples that hold great promise for the study of galaxy formation and evolution at high redshift. The classification, luminosity of molecular line emission, molecular mass, far-infrared (FIR) luminosity, star formation efficiency, morphology, and dynamical mass of the currently known sample are presented and discussed. The star formation rates derived from the FIR luminosity range from about 300 to 5000 M⊙ year −1 and the molecular mass from 4 × 109 to 1 × 1011 M⊙. At the lower end, these star formation rates, gas masses, and diameters are similar to those of local ultraluminous infrared galaxies and represent starbursts in centrally concentrated disks, sometimes, but not always, associated with active galactic nuclei. The evidence for large (>5 kpc) molecular disks is limited. Morphology and several high angular resolution images suggest that some EMGs are mergers with a massive molecular inte...

/pdf/molecular-gas-at-high-redshift-2zde8g6nrh.pdf

Molecular Gas at High Redshift

Prediction of the soft X-ray absorption along lines of sight through our Galaxy is crucial for understanding the spectra of extragalactic sources, but requires a good estimate of the foreground column density of photoelectric absorbing species. Assuming uniform elemental abundances this reduces to having a good estimate of the total hydrogen column density, N(Htot)=N(HI)+2N(H2). The atomic component, N(HI), is reliably provided using the mapped 21 cm radio emission but estimating the molecular hydrogen column density, N(H2), expected for any particular direction, is difficult. The X-ray afterglows of GRBs are ideal sources to probe X-ray absorption in our Galaxy because they are extragalactic, numerous, bright, have simple spectra and occur randomly across the entire sky. We describe an empirical method, utilizing 493 afterglows detected by the Swift XRT, to determine N(Htot) through the Milky Way which provides an improved estimate of the X-ray absorption in our Galaxy and thereby leads to more reliable measurements of the intrinsic X-ray absorption and, potentially, other spectral parameters, for extragalactic X-ray sources. We derive a simple function, dependent on the product of the atomic hydrogen column density, N(HI), and dust extinction, E(B-V), which describes the variation of the molecular hydrogen column density, N(H2), of our Galaxy, over the sky. Using the resulting N(Htot) we show that the dust-to-hydrogen ratio is correlated with the carbon monoxide emission and use this ratio to estimate the fraction of material which forms interstellar dust grains. Our resulting recipe represents a significant revision in Galactic absorption compared to previous standard methods, particularly at low Galactic latitudes.

Calibration of X-ray absorption in our Galaxy

LTE (C-13)O column densities are compared with the corresponding values of beam-convolved visual extinction at more than 100 locations within 38 different interstellar dark clouds. A roughly linear correlation is found to exist between these two quantities for visual extinctions in the range from about 1.5 to 5 mag. It is argued that this correlation can be extended up to about 10 mag and that the standard gas-to-extinction ratio can be expected to remain valid in the sources studied. The correlation of LTE (C-13)O column density with visual extinction is used to obtain an equation for the H2 column density associated with a given (C-13)O column density. It is shown that if the clouds studied are assumed to be chemically homogeneous, the equation obtained implies that at least 12% of all gas-phase carbon is in the form of CO. Comparison of the observational data with various theories proposed for molecule formation in dark clouds indicates that Langer's (1977) ion-molecule scheme accounts well for the observations when the fractionation channel of Watson et al. (1976) is included.

Robert Laurence Dickman

Papers

The ratio of carbon monoxide to molecular hydrogen in interstellar dark clouds