We present the first results from the EMPIRE survey, an IRAM large program that is mapping tracers of high density molecular gas across the disks of nine nearby star-forming galaxies. Here, we present new maps of the 3-mm transitions of HCN, HCO + , and HNC across the whole disk of our pilot target, M51. As expected, dense gas correlates with tracers of recent star formation, filling the "luminosity gap" between Galactic cores and whole galaxies. In detail, we show that both the fraction of gas that is dense, f dense traced by HCN/CO, and the rate at which dense gas forms stars, SFE dense traced by IR/HCN , depend on environment in the galaxy. The sense of the dependence is that high surface density, high molecular gas fraction regions of the galaxy show high dense gas fractions and low dense gas star formation efficiencies. This agrees with recent results for individual pointings by Usero et al. (2015) but using unbiased whole-galaxy maps. It also agrees qualitatively with the behavior observed contrasting our own Solar Neighborhood with the central regions of the Milky Way. The sense of the trends can be explained if the dense gas fraction tracks interstellar pressure but star formation occurs only in regions of high density contrast.

With MUSE, Chandra, VLA, ALMA and UVIT data from the GASP programme we study the multiphase baryonic components in a jellyfish galaxy (JW100) with a stellar mass 3.2 × 10 11 M hosting an AGN. We present its spectacular extraplanar tails of ionized and molecular gas, UV stellar light, X-ray and radio continuum emission. This galaxy represents an excellent laboratory to study the interplay between different gas phases and star formation, and the influence of gas stripping, gas heating, and AGN. We analyze the physical origin of the emission at different wavelengths in the tail, in particular in-situ star formation (related to Hα, CO and UV emission), synchrotron emission from relativistic electrons (producing the radio continuum) and heating of the stripped interstellar medium (ISM) (responsible for the X-ray emission). We show the similarities and differences of the spatial distributions of ionized gas, molecular gas and UV light, and argue that the mismatch on small scales (1kpc) is due to different stages of the star formation process. We present the relation Hα-X-ray surface brightness, which is steeper for star-forming regions than for diffuse ionised gas regions with high [OI]/Hα ratio. We propose that ISM heating due to interaction with the intracluster medium (either for mixing, thermal conduction or shocks) is responsible for the X-ray tail, the observed [OI]excess and the lack of star formation in the northern part of the tail. We also report the tentative discovery in the tail of the most distant (and among the brightest) currently known ULX, a point-like ultraluminous X-ray source commonly originating in a binary stellar system powered either by an intermediate-mass black hole or a magnetized neutron star.

Within the GASP survey, aimed at studying the effect of the ram-pressure stripping on the star formation quenching in cluster galaxies, we analyze here ALMA observations of the jellyfish galaxy JW100. We find an unexpected large amount of molecular gas (∼ 2.5 × 10 10 M ), 30% of which is located in the stripped gas tail out to ∼35 kpc from the galaxy center. The overall kinematics of molecular gas is similar to the one shown by the ionized gas, but for clear signatures of double components along the stripping direction detected only out to 2 kpc from the disk. The line ratio r 21 has a clumpy distribution and in the tail can reach large values (≥ 1), while its average value is low (0.58 with a 0.15 dispersion). All these evidence strongly suggest that the molecular gas in the tail is newly born from stripped HI gas or newly condensed from stripped diffuse molecular gas. The analysis of interferometric data at different scales reveals that a significant fraction (∼ 40%) of the molecular gas is extended over large scales (≥ 8 kpc) in the disk, and this fraction becomes predominant in the tail (∼ 70%). By comparing the molecular gas surface density with the star formation rate surface density derived from the Hα emission from MUSE data, we find that the depletion time on 1 kpc scale is particularly large (5 − 10 Gyr) both within the ram-pressure disturbed region in the stellar disk, and in the complexes along the tail.

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We investigate the environment of 23 submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) drawn from a signal-to-noise (S/N)-limited sample of SMGs originally discovered in the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT)/AzTEC 1.1 mm continuum survey of a Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) subfield and then followed up with the Submillimetre Array and Plateau de Bure Interferometer at 890 µm and 1.3 mm, respectively. These SMGs already have well-defined multiwavelength counterparts and redshifts. We also analyse the environments of four COSMOS SMGs spectroscopically confirmed to lie at redshifts z spec > 4.5, and one at z spec = 2.49 resulting in a total SMG sample size of 28. We search for overdensities using the COSMOS photometric redshifts based on over 30 UV-NIR photometric measurements including the new UltraVISTA data release 2 and Spitzer/SPLASH data, and reaching an accuracy of σ ∆z/(1+z) = 0.0067 (0.0155) at z < 3.5 (>3.5). To identify overdensities we apply the Voronoi tessellation analysis, and estimate the redshift-space overdensity estimator δ g as a function of distance from the SMG and/or overdensity centre. We test and validate our approach via simulations, X-ray detected groups or clusters, and spectroscopic verifications using VUDS and zCOSMOS catalogues which show that even with photometric redshifts in the COSMOS field we can efficiently retrieve overdensities out to z ≈ 5. Our results yield that 11 out of 23 (48%) JCMT/AzTEC 1.1 mm SMGs occupy overdense environments. Considering the entire JCMT/AzTEC 1.1 mm S /N ≥ 4 sample and taking the expected fraction of spurious detections into account, this means that 35-61% of the SMGs in the S/N-limited sample occupy overdense environments. We perform an X-ray stacking analysis in the 0.5-2 keV band using a 32 aperture and our SMG positions, and find statistically significant detections. For our z < 2 subsample we find an average flux of (4.0 ± 0.8) × 10 −16 erg s −1 cm −2 and a corresponding total mass of M 200 = 2.8 × 10 13 M . The z > 2 subsample yields an average flux of (1.3 ± 0.5) × 10 −16 erg s −1 cm −2 and a corresponding total mass of M 200 = 2 × 10 13 M . Our results suggest a higher occurrence of SMGs occupying overdense environments at z ≥ 3 than at z < 3. This may be understood if highly star-forming galaxies can only be formed in the highest peaks of the density field tracing the most massive dark matter haloes at early cosmic epochs, while at later times cosmic structure may have matured sufficiently that more modest overdensities correspond to sufficiently massive haloes to form SMGs.