Sophia Stuber

stuber @ mpia.de

The ISM and Star-Formation in Nearby Galaxies

While highly resolved Milky Way observations link dense gas with immediate sites of star formation, extragalactic works find systematic variations in the dense gas fraction and dense gas star formation efficiency (SFE) on global and kpc-scales. Studying dense gas in nearby galaxies is thus crucial for a better understanding on how and where stars form in our local universe.
With new 3" observations of various dense molecular gas tracers from a NOEMA large-program in the iconic nearby spiral arm galaxy M51, we are able to test proposed drivers of the dense gas SFE and dense gas fraction and address how the molecular gas density distribution relates to the local star formation activity.
We further study the impact of the larger-scale spiral arm dynamics, as well as the central feedback from this galaxy's activate galactic nuclei on the formation, chemistry and evolution of dense clouds.

Supervisor: Eva Schinnerer (MPIA)