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Abstract:

Abstract The PHANGS collaboration has been building a reference data set for the multiscale, multiphase study of star formation and the interstellar medium (ISM) in nearby galaxies. With the successful launch and commissioning of JWST, we can now obtain high-resolution infrared imaging to probe the youngest stellar populations and dust emission on the scales of star clusters and molecular clouds (∼5–50 pc). In Cycle 1, PHANGS is conducting an eight-band imaging survey from 2 to 21 μ m of 19 nearby spiral galaxies. Optical integral field spectroscopy, CO(2–1) mapping, and UV-optical imaging for all 19 galaxies have been obtained through large programs with ALMA, VLT-MUSE, and Hubble. PHANGS–JWST enables a full inventory of star formation, accurate measurement of the mass and age of star clusters, identification of the youngest embedded stellar populations, and characterization of the physical state of small dust grains. When combined with Hubble catalogs of ∼10,000 star clusters, MUSE spectroscopic mapping of ∼20,000 H ii regions, and ∼12,000 ALMA-identified molecular clouds, it becomes possible to measure the timescales and efficiencies of the earliest phases of star formation and feedback, build an empirical model of the dependence of small dust grain properties on local ISM conditions, and test our understanding of how dust-reprocessed starlight traces star formation activity, all across a diversity of galactic environments. Here we describe the PHANGS–JWST Treasury survey, present the remarkable imaging obtained in the first few months of science operations, and provide context for the initial results presented in the first series of PHANGS–JWST publications.

Abstract:

In this work, we present a new catalogue of >40 000 ionised nebulae distributed across the 19 galaxies observed by the PHANGS-MUSE survey. The nebulae have been classified using a new model-comparison-based algorithm that exploits the odds ratio principle to assign a probabilistic classification to each nebula in the sample. The resulting catalogue is the largest catalogue containing complete spectral and spatial information for a variety of ionised nebulae available so far in the literature. We developed this new algorithm to address some of the main limitations of the traditional classification criteria, such as their binarity, the sharpness of the involved limits, and the limited amount of data they rely on for the classification. The analysis of the catalogue shows that the algorithm performs well when selecting H II regions. In fact, we can recover their luminosity function, and its properties are in line with what is available in the literature. We also identify a rather significant population of shock-ionised regions (mostly composed of supernova remnants), which is an order of magnitude larger than any other homogeneous catalogue of supernova remnants currently available in the literature. The number of supernova remnants we identify per galaxy is in line with results in our Galaxy and in other very nearby sources. However, limitations in the source detection algorithm result in an incomplete sample of planetary nebulae, even though their classification seems robust. Finally, we demonstrate how applying a correction for the contribution of the diffuse ionised gas to the nebulae's spectra is essential to obtain a robust classification of the objects and how a correct measurement of the extinction using diffuse-ionised-gas-corrected line fluxes prompts the use of a higher theoretical Hα/Hβ ratio (3.03) than what is commonly used when recovering the E(B -V) via the Balmer decrement technique in massive star-forming galaxies.

Abstract:

We measure the molecular gas environment near recent (<100 yr old) supernovae (SNe) using ∼1″ or ≤150 pc resolution CO (2-1) maps from the PHANGS-Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) survey of nearby star-forming galaxies. This is arguably the first such study to approach the scales of individual massive molecular clouds (M mol ≳ 10^5.3 M ⊙). Using the Open Supernova Catalog, we identify 63 SNe within the PHANGS-ALMA footprint. We detect CO (2-1) emission near ∼60% of the sample at 150 pc resolution, compared to ∼35% of map pixels with CO (2-1) emission, and up to ∼95% of the SNe at 1 kpc resolution, compared to ∼80% of map pixels with CO (2-1) emission. We expect the ∼60% of SNe within the same 150 pc beam, as a giant molecular cloud will likely interact with these clouds in the future, consistent with the observation of widespread SN-molecular gas interaction in the Milky Way, while the other ∼40% of SNe without strong CO (2-1) detections will deposit their energy in the diffuse interstellar medium, perhaps helping drive large-scale turbulence or galactic outflows. Broken down by type, we detect CO (2-1) emission at the sites of ∼85% of our 9 stripped-envelope SNe (SESNe), ∼40% of our 34 Type II SNe, and ∼35% of our 13 Type Ia SNe, indicating that SESNe are most closely associated with the brightest CO (2-1) emitting regions in our sample. Our results confirm that SN explosions are not restricted to only the densest gas, and instead exert feedback across a wide range of molecular gas densities.