ALMA Unveils Widespread Molecular Gas Clumps in the Ram Pressure Stripped Tail of the Norma Jellyfish Galaxy

Abstract

We present the first high-resolution map of the cold molecular gas distribution, as traced by CO(2-1) emission with ALMA, in a prominent ram pressure stripped tail. The Norma cluster galaxy ESO 137-001 is undergoing a strong interaction with the surrounding intra-cluster medium and is one of the nearest jellyfish galaxies with a long multi-phase tail. We have mapped the full extent of the tail at 1 ′′ (350 pc) angular resolution and found a rich distribution of mostly compact CO regions extending to nearly 60 kpc in length and 25 kpc in width. In total about 10 9 M ⊙ of molecular gas was detected. The CO features are found predominantly at the heads of numerous small-scale (∼ 1.5 kpc) fireballs (i.e., star-forming clouds with linear streams of young stars extending toward the galaxy) but also of largescale (∼ 8 kpc) super-fireballs, and double-sided fireballs that have additional diffuse ionized gas tails extending in the direction opposite to the stellar tails. The new data help to shed light on the origin of the molecular tail -CO filaments oriented in the direction of the tail with only diffuse associated Hα emission are likely young molecular features formed in situ, whereas other large CO features tilted with respect to the tail may have originated from the densest gas complexes that were pushed gradually away from the disk. The ALMA observations of ESO 137-001, together with observations from HST, Chandra and VLT/MUSE, offer the most complete view of a spectacular ram pressure stripped tail to date.

GASP. XXII. The Molecular Gas Content of the JW100 Jellyfish Galaxy at z ∼ 0.05: Does Ram Pressure Promote Molecular Gas Formation?

“…∼ 1 kpc). Only recently ALMA has been used to confirm single dish results by Jáchym et al (2019), for the much more nearby jellyfish galaxy ESO137-001 in the Norma cluster.…”

A Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission (VESTIGE)

“…A lot of observational evidence indicates that this process, which is commonly referred to as ram pressure stripping (Gunn & Gott 1972), dominates the evolution of gas-rich late-type systems in nearby massive clusters (e.g., Boselli & Gavazzi 2006, 2014; this evidence includes the presence of galaxies with long cometary tails in the various gas phases (atomic cold, e.g., Chung et al 2007;ionised, Yagi et al 2010;hot, e.g., Sun et al 2007) without any associated stellar counterpart or the high frequency of spirals with radially truncated gaseous discs (e.g., Cayatte et al 1994;Koopmann & Kenney 2004). While many representative objects undergoing a ram pressure stripping event have been already studied in detail using multi-frequency observations (Kenney et al 2004(Kenney et al , 2014(Kenney et al , 2015Crowl et al 2005;Boselli et al 2016a;Sun et al 2006Sun et al , 2007Sun et al , 2010Merluzzi et al 2013;Abramson & Kenney 2014;Abramson et al 2011Abramson et al , 2016Jáchym et al 2013Jáchym et al , 2014Jáchym et al , 2017Jáchym et al , 2019Fumagalli et al 2014;Fossati et al 2016;Poggianti et al 2019;Bellhouse et al 2019;Deb et al 2020;Moretti et al 2020a) and tuned models and simulations (Vollmer et al 1999(Vollmer et al , 2000(Vollmer et al , 2004a(Vollmer et al ,b, 2006(Vollmer et al , 2008a(Vollmer et al ,b, 2012(Vollmer et al , 2018Roediger & Hensl...…”

Mapping the working of environmental effects in A963

“…A burst producing as little as 1% of the final stellar mass of the galaxy is sufficient to lower its D n 4000 to levels more typical of star forming galaxies for a period of a few ×10 8 yrs. The rapid quenching and the quenching accompanied by a star burst are expected from galaxies subjected to rampressure stripping, where the star bursts occurring in their discs are more centrally concentrated (Jachym et al 2019). In contrast, galaxies subjected to starvation do not show this decrease in D n 4000.…”

“…The physics driving the empirically established dependence of most galaxy properties on their environment is still poorly constrained (Boselli & Gavazzi 2006Park & Hwang 2009). Ram-pressure stripping (Gunn & Gott 1972;Quilis et al 2000;Vollmer et al 2001;Bekki & Couch 2003) is often invoked to explain the observations of gas-deficient galaxies or galaxies with irregular appearance in clusters (Kenney et al 2004;Chung et al 2007;Poggianti et al 2017;Jachym et al 2019;Ebeling & Kalita 2019). It has also been successfully shown to explain the distribution, in projected phase-space, of passive galaxies in clusters (Jaffé et al 2016(Jaffé et al , 2018Yoon et al 2017).…”