What Phase of the Interstellar Medium Correlates with the Star Formation Rate?

Abstract

Nearby spiral galaxies show an extremely tight correlation between tracers of molecular hydrogen (H_2) in the interstellar medium (ISM) and tracers of recent star formation, but it is unclear whether this correlation is fundamental or accidental. In the galaxies that have been surveyed to date, H_2 resides predominantly in gravitationally bound clouds cooled by carbon monoxide (CO) molecules, but in galaxies of low metal content the correlations between bound clouds, CO, and H_2 break down, and it is unclear if the star formation rate will then correlate with H_2 or with some other quantity. Here we show that star formation will continue to follow H_2 independent of metallicity. This is not because H_2 is directly important for cooling, but instead because the transition from predominantly atomic hydrogen (HI) to H_2 occurs under the same conditions as a dramatic drop in gas temperature and Bonnor-Ebert mass that destabilizes clouds and initiates collapse. We use this model to compute how star formation rate will correlate with total gas mass, with mass of gas where the hydrogen is H_2, and with mass of gas where the carbon is CO in galaxies of varying metallicity, and show that preliminary observations match the trend we predict.