Cold gas in group-dominant elliptical galaxies

E. O'Sullivan, F. Combes, S. Hamer, Philippe Salomé, A. Babul, S. Raychaudhury

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Abstract

We present IRAM 30m telescope observations of the CO(1-0) and (2-1) lines in a sample of 11 group-dominant elliptical galaxies selected from the CLoGS nearby groups sample. Our observations confirm the presence of molecular gas in 4 of the 11 galaxies at >4 sigma significance, and combining these with data from the literature we find a detection rate of 43+-14%, comparable to the detection rate for nearby radio galaxies, suggesting that group-dominant ellipticals may be more likely to contain molecular gas than their non-central counterparts. Those group-dominant galaxies which are detected typically contain ~2x10^8 Msol of molecular gas, and although most have low star formation rates (
Original languageEnglish
Article numberA111
Number of pages9
JournalAstronomy & Astrophysics
Volume573
Early online date7 Jan 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2015

Bibliographical note

9 pages, 5 postscript figures, 4 tables, accepted by A&A. Revised throughout in response to referee's comments, including updates to Table 1 and Figure 4, and addition of Figure 5

Keywords

  • astro-ph.GA

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