A Correlation Between CO Linewidth and Starburst Age in Barred Spiral Galaxies

T. Contini, H. Wozniak, S. Considere, E. Davoust

Published 1996-12-18Version 1

New CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) 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 (< 100 km/s) 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.