Constraining Resolved Extragalactic R 21 Variation with Well-calibrated ALMA Observations

Journal article

CO(1–0) and CO(2–1) are commonly used as bulk molecular gas tracers. The CO line ratios (especially CO(2–1)/CO(1–0)–R21) vary within and among galaxies, yet previous studies on R21 and alike often rely on measurements constructed by combining data from facilities with substantial relative calibration uncertainties that have the same order as physical line ratio variations. Hence, robustly determining systematic R21 variations is challenging. Here, we compare CO(1–0) and CO(2–1) mapping data from ALMA for 14 nearby galaxies, at a common physical resolution of 1.7 kpc. Our data set includes new ALMA (7 m+TP) CO(1–0) maps of 12 galaxies. We investigate R21 variation to understand its dependence on global galaxy properties, kiloparsec-scale environmental factors, and its correlation with star formation rate (SFR) surface density and metallicity. We find that the galaxy-to-galaxy scatter is 0.05 dex. This is lower than previous studies, which reported over 0.1 dex variation, likely reflecting significant flux calibration uncertainties in single-dish surveys. Within individual galaxies, R21 has a typical mean value of ∼0.64 and 0.1 dex variation, with an increase to ∼0.75 toward galactic centers. We find strong correlations between R21 and various galactic parameters, particularly SFR surface density, which shows a power-law slope of 0.10–0.11 depending on the adopted binning/fitting methods. Our findings suggest that, for studies covering main-sequence galaxy samples, assuming a fixed R21 = 0.64 does not significantly bias kiloparsec-scale molecular gas mass estimates from CO(2–1). Instead, systematic uncertainties from flux calibration and the CO-to-H2 conversion factor account for more systematic scatter of CO-derived molecular gas properties.

Authors: den Brok, J; Oakes, EK; Leroy, AK; Koch, EW; Usero, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Astronomical Society
• Journal: The Astrophysical Journal
• Volume: 988
• Issue: 2
• Article number: 162
• Publication date: 2025-07-22
• Acceptance date: 2025-05-30
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/addf4c
• EISSN: 1538-4357
• ISSN: 0004-637X
• Language: English
• Keywords: Spiral galaxies; Radio interferometry; Interstellar medium; Molecular gas; Millimeter-wave spectroscopy