Speaker
Andreas Schruba
(Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik)
Description
State-of-the-art instrumentation is currently revolutionizing our view on the gas-star
cycle in nearby galaxies by resolving individual star-forming clouds and their young
stellar population. I will highlight recent results from several concerted legacy-type
surveys targeting galaxies in the Local Group and Local Universe. This includes (a)
the structure of the atomic and molecular gas and the separation of the atomic gas
into a cold and warm neutral medium, the finding of significant diffuse molecular gas,
and observational evidence what drives the atomic-molecular phase balance. (b) A
characterization of the gas properties at cloud-scale reveals striking similarities
(eg, a narrow range of cloud surface densities within a galaxy) but also systematic
variations depending galactic properties (eg, the mean cloud surface density and
gravitational boundedness). (c) The galactic gas-star formation (Schmidt-Kennicutt)
relation systematically depends on the (varying) cloud-scale gas properties and
changes become apparent between massive disk, low mass, and starbursting
galaxies. (d) The resolved observations allow us to extract the evolutionary
timescales of the gas-star cycle for different galactic environments.
Primary author
Andreas Schruba
(Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik)
