Seminar
Physical conditions of starburst galaxies from LMT 3-mm spectra

Resumen

I will present the first Large Millimiter Telescope spectra of 4 nearby galaxies with known high star formation rates. The individual spectra were acquired with the Redshift Search Receiver, a 3 mm spectrograph that covers simultaneously the 3 mm band from 75 to 110 GHz. The spectra show rms temperatures of around 4 mK that allow us to detect not only common molecular species such as CO, HCN, HCO+, HCN, 13CO reported widely in the literature but also other more rare molecular transitions (HC3N, CN, CH3OH, CH3C2H) and even Hydrogen recombination lines (from H39alpha to H42alpha). We are making use of theoretical radiative transfer models to analize these spectra in order to understand the variations of the observed line ratios of different lines in galaxies classified as ultraluminous infrared galaxies where the star formation rate may be as high as 100 solar masses per year. These data will help to understand the physical conditions of the gas in regions that are forming stars very efficiently. The observed line ratios in star forming galaxies are also compared to those galaxies that is known to contain an AGN.