High Excitation Molecular Gas in the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

We present the first survey of submillimeter CO 4-3 emission in the Magellanic Clouds. The survey is comprised of 15 6'x6' maps obtained using the AST/RO telescope toward the molecular peaks of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. We have used these data to constrain the physical conditions in these objects, in particular their molecular gas density and temperature. We find that there are significant amounts of molecular gas associated with most of these molecular peaks, and that high molecular gas temperatures are pervasive throughout our sample. We discuss whether this may be due to the low metallicities and the associated dearth of gas coolants in the Clouds, and conclude that the present sample is insufficient to assert this effect.

18 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables. To appear in ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• The Molecular ISM of Dwarf Galaxies on Kiloparsec Scales: A New Survey for CO in Northern, IRAS-detected Dwarf Galaxies
• Unusual CO Line Ratios and kinematics in the N83/N84 Region of the Small Magellanic Cloud
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• Warm and Dense Molecular Gas in the N159 Region: 12CO J=4-3 and 13CO J=3-2 Observations with NANTEN2 and ASTE
• Dense Clumps in Giant Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud: Density and Temperature Derived from ${}^{13}$CO($J=3-2$) Observations
• Submillimeter Line Emission from LMC N159W: a Dense, Clumpy PDR in a Low Metallicity Environment
• Kinetic temperature of massive star forming molecular clumps measured with formaldehyde. II. The Large Magellanic Cloud
• First Detection of Ammonia in the Large Magellanic Cloud: The Kinetic Temperature of Dense Molecular Cores in N159W
• ALMA observations of N83C in the early stage of star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Radiative and mechanical feedback into the molecular gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud. I. N159W
• Infrared Dark Clouds in the Small Magellanic Cloud?
• SuperCAM CO(3-2) APEX survey at 6 pc resolution in the Small Magellanic Clouds