VERTICO V: The environmentally driven evolution of the inner cold gas discs of Virgo cluster galaxies

Abstract

The quenching of cluster satellite galaxies is inextricably linked to the suppression of their cold interstellar medium (ISM) by environmental mechanisms. While the removal of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) at large radii is well studied, how the environment impacts the remaining gas in the centres of galaxies, which are dominated by molecular gas, is less clear. Using new observations from the Virgo Environment traced in CO survey (VERTICO) and archival HI data, we study the HI and molecular gas within the optical discs of Virgo cluster galaxies on 1.2-kpc scales with spatially resolved scaling relations between stellar (${\Sigma }_{\star }$), HI (${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{HI}}$), and molecular gas (${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}$) surface densities. Adopting HI deficiency as a measure of environmental impact, we find evidence that, in addition to removing the HI at large radii, the cluster processes also lower the average ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{HI}}$ of the remaining gas even in the central 1.2 kpc. The impact on molecular gas is comparatively weaker than on the HI, and we show that the lower ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}$ gas is removed first. In the most HI-deficient galaxies, however, we find evidence that environmental processes reduce the typical ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}$ of the remaining gas by nearly a factor of 3. We find no evidence for environment-driven elevation of ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{HI}}$ or ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}$ in HI-deficient galaxies. Using the ratio of ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}$-to-${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{HI}}$ in individual regions, we show that changes in the ISM physical conditions, estimated using the total gas surface density and midplane hydrostatic pressure, cannot explain the observed reduction in molecular gas content. Instead, we suggest that direct stripping of the molecular gas is required to explain our results.

Accepted for publication in PASA. Main text is 19 pages including 12 figures and 3 tables, plus 1 appendix. A 2.5 min, high-level summary can be found at https://youtu.be/7djMmVEpDVc

References in corpus (34)

• The Role of Pressure in GMC Formation II: The H_2 - Pressure Relation
• The Resolved Properties of Extragalactic Giant Molecular Clouds
• xCOLD GASS: the complete IRAM-30m legacy survey of molecular gas for galaxy evolution studies
• The Atomic to Molecular Transition in Galaxies. II: HI and H_2 Column Densities
• CO-dark gas and molecular filaments in Milky Way type galaxies
• Ram pressure stripping of disc galaxies orbiting in clusters. I. Mass and radius of the remaining gas disc
• Abundant molecular gas and inefficient star formation in intracluster regions: Ram pressure stripped tail of the Norma galaxy ESO137-001
• The fate of spiral galaxies in clusters: the star formation history of the anemic Virgo cluster galaxy NGC 4569
• The ALMaQUEST Survey: The molecular gas main sequence and the origin of the star forming main sequence
• The quenching of the star formation activity in cluster galaxies
• NGC 4254: An Act of Harassment Uncovered by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey
• The Stellar Populations of Stripped Spiral Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster
• The ALMaQUEST Survey: V. The non-universality of kpc-scale star formation relations and the factors that drive them
• LoTSS jellyfish galaxies: II. Ram pressure stripping in groups versus clusters
• The ALMaQUEST Survey IX: The nature of the resolved star forming main sequence
• The high molecular gas content, and the efficient conversion of neutral into molecular gas, in jellyfish galaxies
• Large-scale filamentary structures around the Virgo cluster revisited
• GASP XXX. The spatially resolved SFR-Mass relation in stripping galaxies in the local universe
• A blind ATCA HI survey of the Fornax galaxy cluster: properties of the HI detections
• Characterization of ICM Temperature Distributions of 62 Galaxy Clusters with XMM-Newton
• CO-dark gas and molecular filaments in Milky Way-type galaxies - II: The temperature distribution of the gas
• The AMIGA sample of isolated galaxies XIII. The HI content of an almost "nurture free" sample
• VERTICO II: effects of HI-identified environmental mechanisms on molecular gas
• GASP XXVII: Gas-phase metallicity scaling relations in disk galaxies with and without ram-pressure stripping
• An orbital perspective on the starvation, stripping, and quenching of satellite galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• The ALMaQUEST Survey: VI. The molecular gas main sequence of `retired' regions in galaxies
• Tracing Ram-Pressure Stripping with Warm Molecular Hydrogen Emission
• Spatially extended and high-velocity dispersion molecular component in spiral galaxies: single-dish vs. interferometric observations
• VERTICO III: The Kennicutt-Schmidt relation in Virgo cluster galaxies
• VERTICO IV: Environmental Effects on the Gas Distribution and Star Formation Efficiency of Virgo Cluster Spirals
• Walk on the Low Side: LOFAR explores the low-frequency radio emission of GASP jellyfish galaxies
• A Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission (VESTIGE).VI. Environmental quenching on HII region scales
• Ram pressure stripping of the multiphase ISM: a detailed view from TIGRESS simulations
• Ram Pressure Stripping and ISM disc Truncation : Prediction vs. Observation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Radio continuum tails in ram pressure-stripped spiral galaxies: experimenting with a semi-empirical model in Abell 2255
• The impact of environment on size: Galaxies are 50% smaller in the Fornax Cluster compared to the field
• VERTICO VI: Cold-gas asymmetries in Virgo cluster galaxies
• Identification of ram pressure stripping features in galaxies using citizen science
• VERTICO IX: Signatures of environmental processing of the gas in Virgo cluster spiral galaxies through mapping of CO isotopologues
• Initial Investigations of the Outskirts of XLSSC 122