Journal article
WISDOM project – XXIII. Star formation efficiencies of eight early-type galaxies and bulges observed with SITELLE and ALMA
- Abstract:
- Early-type galaxies (ETGs) are known to harbour dense spheroids of stars with scarce star formation (SF). Approximately a quarter of these galaxies have rich molecular gas reservoirs yet do not form stars efficiently. These gas-rich ETGs have properties similar to those of bulges at the centres of spiral galaxies. We use spatially resolved observations (∼ 100 pc resolution) of warm ionized-gas emission lines (H𝛽, [OIII], [NII], H𝛼 and [SII]) from the imaging Fourier transform spectrograph SITELLE at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope and cold molecular gas [12CO(2–1) or 12CO(3–2)] from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to study the SF properties of eight ETGs and bulges. We use the ionized-gas emission lines to classify the ionization mechanisms and demonstrate a complete absence of regions dominated by SF ionization in these ETGs and bulges, despite abundant cold molecular gas. The ionization classifications also show that our ETGs and bulges are dominated by old stellar populations. We use the molecular gas surface densities and H -derived SF rates (in spiral galaxies outside of the bulges) or upper limits (in ETGs and bulges) to constrain the depletion times (inverse of the SF efficiencies), suggesting again suppressed SF in our ETGs and bulges. Finally, we use the molecular gas velocity fields to measure the gas kinematics, and show that bulge dynamics, particularly the strong shear due to the deep and steep gravitational potential wells, is an important SF regulation mechanism for at least half of our sample galaxies.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 3.5MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/mnras/staf675
Authors
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
- Funding agency for:
- Gensior, J
- Bureau, M
- Grant:
- ST/Y001133/1
- ST/H002456/1
- ST/K00106X/1
- Programme:
- Astrophysics at Oxford
+ Swiss National Science Foundation
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/00yjd3n13
- Funding agency for:
- Gensior, J
- Grant:
- CRSII5_193826
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
- Funding agency for:
- Davis, TA
- Grant:
- ST/W000830/1
+ European Southern Observatory
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/01qtasp15
- Funding agency for:
- Liang, F-H
+ Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/01h531d29
- Funding agency for:
- Lu, A
- Haggard, D
- Robert, C
- Boyce, H
- Drissen, L
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 540
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 71-89
- Publication date:
- 2025-04-26
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-04-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1365-2966
- ISSN:
-
0035-8711
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2121482
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2121482
- Source identifiers:
-
2937803
- Deposit date:
-
2025-05-16
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Lu et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record