Multi-wavelength and Multi-CO View of The Minor Merger Driven Star Formation in the Nearby LIRG NGC 3110

Abstract

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of multiple CO(1-0), ${}^{13}$CO(1-0), and C${}^{18}$O(1-0) lines and 2.9 mm and 1.3 mm continuum emission toward the nearby interacting luminous infrared galaxy NGC 3110, supplemented with similar spatial resolution H$\alpha$, 1.4GHz continuum, and $K$-band data. We estimate the typical CO-to-H${}_2$ conversion factor of 1.7 $M_{\odot }$ (K km s${}^{-1}$ pc${}^2$)${}^{-1}$ within the disk using LTE-based and dust-based H${}_2$ column densities, and measure the 1-kpc scale surface densities of star formation rate (${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SFR}}$), super star clusters (${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SSC}}$), molecular gas mass, and star formation efficiency (SFE) toward the entire gas disk. These parameters show a peak at the southern part of the southern spiral arm (SFE $\sim$ 10${}^{-8.2}$ yr${}^{-1}$, ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ $\sim$ 10${}^{-0.6}$ $M_{\odot }$ kpc${}^{-2}$ yr${}^{-1}$, ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SSC}}$ $\sim$ 6.0 kpc${}^{-2}$), which is likely attributed to the on-going tidal interaction with the companion galaxy MCG-01-26-013, as well as toward the circumnuclear region. We also find that thermal free-free emission contributes to a significant fraction of the millimeter continuum emission at the southern peak position. Those measurements imply that the peak of the southern arm is an active and young star-forming region, whereas the central part of NGC 3110 is a site of long-continued star formation. We suggest that, during the early stage of the galaxy-galaxy interaction with large mass ratio that in NGC 3110, fragmentation along the main galaxy's arms is an important driver of merger-induced star formation and massive gas inflow results in dusty nuclear starbursts.

arXiv comment17 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

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