Giant molecular clouds in M 33: are they susceptible to dynamical friction?

Abstract

Most of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M 33 are connected with spiral-like gaseous arms (filaments) with the exception of the inner 2 kpc region where the link between the arms and GMCs disappears (see Tosaki et al. 2011). We check whether it may be caused by the dynamic friction retarding the clouds. Using semi-analytical model for this galaxy we calculate the dynamics of GMCs of different masses situated at different initial galactocentric distances in the disk plane. We demonstrate that the dynamical friction may really change the orbits of GMCs in the central 2 kpc-size region. However in this case the typical lifetimes of GMCs should be close to or greater than $10^8$~yr, which is larger than the usually accepted values.

5 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• Dynamical signatures of a LCDM-halo and the distribution of the baryons in M33
• Bar imprints on the inner gas kinematics of M33
• Star Formation in Disk Galaxies. III. Does stellar feedback result in cloud death?
• The dependence of stellar age distributions on GMC environment
• Cloud angular momentum and effective viscosity in global SPH simulations with feedback
• Can molecular clouds live long?

Cited by in corpus (1)

• GMC Evolution in a Barred Spiral Galaxy with Star Formation and Thermal Feedback