Radio Continuum and Star Formation in CO-rich Early Type Galaxies

Abstract

In this paper we present new high resolution VLA 1.4 GHz radio continuum observations of five FIR bright CO-rich early-type galaxies and two dwarf early-type galaxies. The position on the radio-FIR correlation combined with striking agreements in morphology between high resolution CO and radio maps show that the radio continuum is associated with star formation in at least four of the eight galaxies. The average star formation rate for the sample galaxies detected in radio is approximately 2 solar masses per year. There is no evidence of a luminous AGN in any of our sample galaxies. We estimate Toomre Q values and find that the gas disks may well be gravitationally unstable, consistent with the above evidence for star formation activity. The radio continuum emission thus corroborates other recent suggestions that star formation in early type galaxies may not be uncommon.

21 pages, 7 figures, to be published in the Astronomical Journal

References in corpus (3)

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• The Cool ISM in Elliptical Galaxies. I. A Survey of Molecular Gas
• The characteristic polarized radio continuum distribution of cluster spiral galaxies

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• Intermediate-mass black holes: finding of episodic, large-scale and powerful jet activity in a dwarf galaxy
• Early-type galaxies at intermediate redshift observed with HST WFC3: perspectives on recent star-formation
• Observation of HI around three satellite galaxies of the M31 with the FAST: Andromeda II, NGC 205, and NGC 185