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The Global Schmidt law in star forming galaxies

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TLDR
In this paper, the Schmidt law was used to model the global star formation law over the full range of gas densities and star formation rates observed in galaxies, and the results showed that the SFR scales with the ratio of the gas density to the average orbital timescale.
Abstract
Measurements of Hα, H I, and CO distributions in 61 normal spiral galaxies are combined with published far-infrared and CO observations of 36 infrared-selected starburst galaxies, in order to study the form of the global star formation law over the full range of gas densities and star formation rates (SFRs) observed in galaxies. The disk-averaged SFRs and gas densities for the combined sample are well represented by a Schmidt law with index N = 1.4 ± 0.15. The Schmidt law provides a surprisingly tight parametrization of the global star formation law, extending over several orders of magnitude in SFR and gas density. An alternative formulation of the star formation law, in which the SFR is presumed to scale with the ratio of the gas density to the average orbital timescale, also fits the data very well. Both descriptions provide potentially useful "recipes" for modeling the SFR in numerical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Physical Properties and Environments of Nearby Galaxies

TL;DR: In this paper, the physical properties of nearby, relatively luminous galaxies, using results from newly available massive data sets together with more detailed observations, were reviewed using the optical and ultraviolet luminosity, stellar mass, and atomic gas mass functions.
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Simulating galactic outflows with thermal supernova feedback

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use analytic arguments to estimate the minimum heating temperature that is required for the injected thermal energy to be efficiently converted into kinetic energy and then propose and test a stochastic implementation of thermal feedback that uses this minimum temperature increase as an input parameter and that can be employed in both particle-based and grid-based codes.
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The Herschel* PEP/HerMES luminosity function - I. Probing the evolution of PACS selected Galaxies to z ≃ 4

Carlotta Gruppioni, +118 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors exploit the deep and extended far-IR data sets (at 70, 100 and 160 μm) of the GPS PACS Evolutionary Probe (PEP) Survey, in combination with the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey data at 250, 350 and 500 μm, to derive the evolution of the rest-frame 35-, 60-, 90- and total infrared luminosity functions (LFs) up to z ∼ 4.
References
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Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison of theory with observations internal dynamics of gaseous nebulae interstellar dust H II regions in the galactic context is presented. But the results are limited to the case of active galactic nuclei.
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Luminous infrared galaxies

TL;DR: At the highest luminosities (Lir > 1012 ), nearly all objects appear to be advanced mergers powered by a mixture of circumnuclear starburst and active galactic nucleus energy sources, both of which are fueled by an enormous concentration of molecular gas that has been funneled into the merger nucleus as discussed by the authors.
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A survey of interstellar H I from L-alpha absorption measurements. II

TL;DR: The Copernicus satellite surveyed the spectral region near L alpha to obtain column densities of interstellar HI toward 100 stars as discussed by the authors, and the value of the mean ratio of total neutral hydrogen to color excess was found to equal 5.8 x 10 to the 21st power atoms per (sq cm x mag).
Journal ArticleDOI

The Rate of Star Formation

Journal ArticleDOI

The Star Formation Law in Galactic Disks

TL;DR: In this article, the dependence of the massive star formation rate (SFR) on the density and dynamics of the interstellar gas was investigated in 15 galaxies and the relationship between the SFR and gas surface density was defined.
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