Spiral Structure Boosts Star Formation in Disk Galaxies

Abstract

We investigate the impact of spiral structure on global star formation using a sample of 2226 nearby bright disk galaxies. Examining the relationship between spiral arms, star formation rate (SFR), and stellar mass, we find that arm strength correlates well with the variation of SFR as a function of stellar mass. Arms are stronger above the star-forming galaxy main sequence (MS) and weaker below it: arm strength increases with higher log ( SFR / SFR MS ) , where SFR MS is the SFR along the MS. Likewise, stronger arms are associated with higher specific SFR. We confirm this trend using the optical colors of a larger sample of 4378 disk galaxies, whose position on the blue cloud also depends systematically on spiral arm strength. This link is independent of other galaxy structural parameters. For the subset of galaxies with cold gas measurements, arm strength positively correlates with H i and H 2 mass fraction, even after removing the mutual dependence on log ( SFR / SFR MS ) , consistent with the notion that spiral arms are maintained by dynamical cooling provided by gas damping. For a given gas fraction, stronger arms lead to higher log ( SFR / SFR MS ) , resulting in a trend of increasing arm strength with shorter gas depletion time. We suggest a physical picture in which the dissipation process provided by gas damping maintains spiral structure, which, in turn, boosts the star formation efficiency of the gas reservoir.