Radial distributions of the HCN/CO ratio in nearby CO bright galaxies

Abstract

Simultaneous observations of HCN and CO lines were made along the major axes of six nearby CO bright galaxies with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope. The beam-averaged HCN/CO ratios are 0.01 to 0.1. The distributions of the HCN/CO ratio along the major axes (and the minor axis for M 51) show different patterns from one galaxy to another. By adding data obtained from the outer disk, however, we found gradual decreases in the HCN and CO intensities and the HCN/CO ratio with increasing radius in M 51 from the nuclear region to 3 kpc, similar to our previous result for NGC 253. The HCN/CO ratio is very sensitive to the observing beam size on a linear scale. The ratio, which reflects the fraction of dense molecular gas, correlates with the star-formation activity derived from the far-infrared luminosity.