The Star Formation Relation for Regions in the Galactic Plane: The Effect of Spatial Resolution

Abstract

We examined the relations between molecular gas surface density and star formation rate surface density in a 11 square degree region of the Galactic Plane. Dust continuum at 1.1 mm from the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey and 22 micron emission from the WISE All-sky survey were used as tracers of molecular gas and star formation rate, respectively, across Galactic longitude of 31.5 > l > 20.5 and Galactic latitude of 0.5 > b > -0.5. The relation was studied over a range of resolutions from 33 arcsecond to 20 arcminute by convolving images to larger scales. The pixel-by-pixel correlation between 1.1 mm and 22 micron increases rapidly at small scales and levels off at the scale of 5 - 8 arcminute. We studied the star formation relation based on pixel-by-pixel analysis and 1.1 mm and 22 micron peaks analysis. The star formation relation was found to be nearly linear with no significant changes in the form of the relation across all spatial scales and lie above the extragalactic relation from Kennicutt (1998). The average gas depletion time is approximately 200 Myr and does not change significantly at different scales, but the scatter in the depletion time decreases as the scale increases.

arXiv comment23 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (50)

• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
• Star Formation in Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence
• Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• The Milky Way in Molecular Clouds: A New Complete CO Survey
• The Star Formation Law in Nearby Galaxies on Sub-Kpc Scales
• Dust Masses, PAH Abundances, and Starlight Intensities in the SINGS Galaxy Sample
• The Star Formation Rate and Dense Molecular Gas in Galaxies
• The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators
• On the Star Formation Rates in Molecular Clouds
• The Relationship Between Gas Content and Star Formation in Molecule-Rich Spiral Galaxies
• Molecular Gas and Star Formation in Nearby Disk Galaxies
• The Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey
• Star Formation in NGC 5194 (M51a). II. The Spatially-Resolved Star Formation Law
• A Molecular Star Formation Law in the Atomic Gas Dominated Regime in Nearby Galaxies
• HCN Survey of Normal Spiral, IR-luminous and Ultraluminous Galaxies
• The Star Formation Rate and Gas Surface Density Relation in the Milky Way: Implications for Extragalactic Studies
• Planck Early Results: All sky temperature and dust optical depth from Planck and IRAS: Constraints on the "dark gas" in our galaxy
• First GLIMPSE Results on the Stellar Structure of the Galaxy
• The WISE Catalog of Galactic HII Regions
• Star Formation Efficiencies and Lifetimes of Giant Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way
• The Calibration of Monochromatic Far-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators
• Connecting Dense Gas Tracers of Star Formation in our Galaxy to High-z Star Formation
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey: Survey Description and Data Reduction
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey -- II. Catalog of the Image Data
• Star Formation Relations in Nearby Molecular Clouds
• The Properties of Massive, Dense, Clumps: Mapping Surveys of HCN and CS
• An uncertainty principle for star formation. I. Why galactic star formation relations break down below a certain spatial scale
• The State of the Gas and the Relation Between Gas and Star Formation at Low Metallicity: the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Spitzer Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud: FIR Emission and Cold Gas in the SMC
• The Scale Dependence of the Molecular Gas Depletion Time in M33
• The Spatially Resolved Star Formation Law from Integral Field Spectroscopy: VIRUS-P Observations of NGC 5194
• SLUG - Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies I: Methods and Validating Tests
• Characterizing Precursors to Stellar Clusters with Herschel
• Breakdown of Kennicutt-Schmidt Law at GMC Scales in M33
• Stochastic star formation and a (nearly) uniform stellar initial mass function
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey IX: Data Release 2 and Outer Galaxy Extension
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey. VII. Characterizing the Properties of Massive Star-Forming Regions
• The Super-linear Slope of the Spatially-Resolved Star Formation Law in NGC 3521 and NGC 5194 (M51a)
• SLUG - Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies. II: Quantifying the Effects of Stochasticity on Star Formation Rate Indicators
• Schmidt's Conjecture and Star Formation in Molecular Clouds
• An Infrared through Radio Study of the Properties and Evolution of IRDC Clumps
• Statistical properties of dust far-infrared emission
• The Dense Gas Mass Fraction of Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey V: HCO+ and N2H+ Spectroscopy of 1.1 mm Dust Continuum Sources
• Star formation in M33: the radial and local relations with the gas
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey -- III. Characterizing Physical Properties of Massive Star-Forming Regions in the Gemini OB1 Molecular Cloud
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey. X. A Complete Spectroscopic Catalog of Dense Molecular Gas Observed toward 1.1 mm Dust Continuum Sources with 7.5 <= l <= 194 degrees
• The Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey. VIII. A Mid-Infrared Kinematic Distance Discrimination Method
• Dust in the diffuse emission of the galactic plane - The Herschel/Spitzer SED fitting
• Testing 24 micron and Infrared Luminosity as Star Formation Tracers for Galactic Star Forming Regions

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Fast and inefficient star formation due to short-lived molecular clouds and rapid feedback
• Star Formation Relations in the Milky Way
• The resolved star-formation relation in nearby active galactic nuclei
• On the Appearance of Thresholds in the Dynamical Model of Star Formation
• The dense gas mass fraction in the W51 cloud and its protoclusters
• The resolved scaling relations in DustPedia: Zooming in on the local Universe
• Source clustering in the Hi-GAL survey determined using a minimum spanning tree method