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A correlation between CO linewidth and starburst age in barred spiral galaxies

T. Contini tex2html_wrap_inline616 , H. Wozniak tex2html_wrap_inline612 , S. Considère tex2html_wrap_inline614 , and E. Davoust tex2html_wrap_inline616
tex2html_wrap_inline616 Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, UMR 5572, 14 Avenue E. Belin, F-31400 Toulouse, France
tex2html_wrap_inline612 Observatoire de Marseille, URA CNRS 237, 2 Place Le Verrier, F-13248 Marseille Cedex 4, France
tex2html_wrap_inline614 Observatoire de Besançon, EP CNRS 123, B.P. 1615, F-25010 Besançon Cedex, France
Abstract: New CO(1 tex2html_wrap_inline644 0) and CO(2 tex2html_wrap_inline644 1) profiles complemented by data from the literature are used to obtain CO linewidths for 29 barred spiral galaxies with young nuclear starbursts. The ages of the starbursts were estimated from optical spectroscopy and recent evolutionary synthesis models. The CO linewidths and the starburst ages are correlated : galaxies with young (4-6 Myr) starbursts display narrow ( tex2html_wrap_inline648 km.s tex2html_wrap_inline650 ) CO line while those with older starbursts show broader CO lines. We discuss several scenarios of the gas dynamics during the nuclear starbursts' evolution to interpret the correlation.


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