Browsing by Author "Barnes, J. E."

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    MORPHOLOGY AND MOLECULAR GAS FRACTIONS OF LOCAL LUMINOUS INFRARED GALAXIES AS A FUNCTION OF INFRARED LUMINOSITY AND MERGER STAGE
    (IOP PUBLISHING LTD, 2016) Larson, K. L.; Sanders, D. B.; Barnes, J. E.; Ishida, C. M.; Evans, A. S.; Mazzarella, J. M.; Kim, D. C.; Privon, G. C.; Mirabel, I. F.; Flewelling, H. A.
    We present a new, detailed analysis of the morphologies and molecular gas fractions (MGFs) for a complete sample of 65 local luminous infrared galaxies from Great Observatories All-Sky Luminous Infrared Galaxies (LIRG) Survey using high resolution I-band images from The Hubble Space Telescope, the University of Hawaii 2.2 m Telescope and the Pan-STARRS1 Survey. Our classification scheme includes single undisturbed galaxies, minor mergers, and major mergers, with the latter divided into five distinct stages from pre-first pericenter passage to final nuclear coalescence. We find that major mergers of molecular gas-rich spirals clearly play a major role for all sources with L-IR > 10(11.5)L(circle dot); however, below this luminosity threshold, minor mergers and secular processes dominate. Additionally, galaxies do not reach L-IR > 10(12.0)L(circle dot) until late in the merger process when both disks are near final coalescence. The mean MGF (MGF = M-H2(M*+ M-H2)) for non-interacting and early-stage major merger LIRGs is 18 +/- 2%, which increases to 33 +/- 3%, for intermediate stage major merger LIRGs, consistent with the hypothesis that, during the early-mid stages of major mergers, most of the initial large reservoir of atomic gas (HI) at large galactocentric radii is swept inward where it is converted into molecular gas (H-2).