CS 5-4 survey toward nearby IR bright galaxies

Abstract

With the observations of the CS 5-4 line toward a sample of 24 infrared bright galaxies using HHSMT, we detected CS 5-4 emission in 14 galaxies, including 12 ULIRGs/LIRGs and 2 nearby normal galaxies. As a good dense gas tracer, which has been well used for studying star formation in the Milky Way, CS 5-4 can trace the active star forming gas in galaxies. The correlation between CS 5-4 luminosity, which is estimated with detected CS 5-4 line emission, and infrared luminosity in these 14 galaxies is fitted with correlation coefficient of 0.939 and the slope close to unity. This correlation confirmed that dense gas, which is closely linked to star formation, is very important for understanding star formation in galaxies.