Molecular Gas and Star Formation in Nearby Starburst Galaxy Mergers

Abstract

We employ the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE-2) physics model to study how the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) evolve during galaxy mergers. We conduct a pixel-by-pixel analysis of molecular gas properties in both the simulated control galaxies and galaxy major mergers. The simulated GMC pixels in the control galaxies follow a similar trend in a diagram of velocity dispersion ( σ _v ) versus gas surface density (Σ _mol) to the one observed in local spiral galaxies in the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) survey. For GMC pixels in simulated mergers, we see a significant increase of a factor of 5–10 in both Σ _mol and σ _v , which puts these pixels above the trend of PHANGS galaxies in the σ _v versus Σ _mol diagram. This deviation may indicate that GMCs in the simulated mergers are much less gravitationally bound compared with simulated control galaxies with virial parameters ( α _vir) reaching 10–100. Furthermore, we find that the increase in α _vir happens at the same time as the increase in global star formation rate, which suggests that stellar feedback is responsible for dispersing the gas. We also find that the gas depletion time is significantly lower for high- α _vir GMCs during a starburst event. This is in contrast to the simple physical picture that low- α _vir GMCs are easier to collapse and form stars on shorter depletion times. This might suggest that some other physical mechanisms besides self-gravity are helping the GMCs in starbursting mergers collapse and form stars.