Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies

Abstract

We explore mechanisms for the regulation of star formation in dwarf galaxies. We concentrate primarily on a sample in the Virgo cluster, which has HI and blue total photometry, for which we collected H$\alpha$ data at the Wise Observatory. We find that dwarf galaxies do not show the tight correlation of the surface brightness of H$\alpha$ (a star formation indicator) with the HI surface density, or with the ratio of this density to a dynamical timescale, as found for large disk or starburst galaxies. On the other hand, we find the strongest correlation to be with the average blue surface brightness, indicating the presence of a mechanism regulating the star formation by the older (up to 1 Gyr) stellar population if present, or by the stellar population already formed in the present burst.

15 pages (LATEX aasms4 style) and three postscript figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (5)

• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• The dark and baryonic matter content of low surface brightness disk galaxies
• The Ha Luminosity Function and Star Formation Rate at z\sim 0.2
• The Relationship Between Gas, Stars, and Star Formation in Irregular Galaxies: A Test of Simple Models
• Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (14)

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• The NGC 672 and NGC 784 Galaxy Groups: Evidence for Galaxy Formation and Growth Along a Nearby Dark Matter Filament
• Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies
• The Void in the Sculptor Group Spiral Galaxy NGC 247
• Anomalous gas in ESO 149-G003: A MeerKAT-16 View
• EIG - II. Intriguing characteristics of the most extremely isolated galaxies
• Extremely Isolated Galaxies I. Sample and Simulation Analysis
• Dust and Gas as Seeds for Metal-Poor Star Formation
• Comment Regarding the Functional Form of the Schmidt Law
• Morphological aspects of star formation in dwarf galaxies