Molecular gas and dust properties of local LIRGs

11 July 2019

Gas is a critical component of galaxies, providing the fuel for star formation. Dust mixed with in with the gas also provides an important avenue for radiative cooling of gas and an alternate probe of the mass of gas in galaxies. We have completed a study of the galaxy-integrated molecular gas masses in a sample of nearby infrared galaxies. We calculate an average H2-CO conversion factor for GOALS galaxies using calculated dust masses and the assumption that the gas-to-dust ratio and H2/HI fraction of GOALS galaxies matches that of normal galaxies. We also present galaxy-integrated measurements of 13CO for a subset of the systems. A preprint of “Molecular gas and dust properties of galaxies from the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey” (Herrero-Illana+) has been posted to arXiv. The paper has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics and will appear soon.