We present high resolution （- 1″） H2CO maser and 5 GHz radio continuum observations toward nearby merging galaxy NGC 6240 made with the Very Large Array in an A configuration. Two concentrations of H2CO emission at about a 6or level have been detected, one of which is associated with the strongest CO peak in the overlap region while the other is about 2″ southwest of the southem galaxy. Both H2CO concentrations are associated with near infrared H2 emission, which is thought to be from shocked molecular gas. The total H2CO line luminosity in NGC 6240 is about 60% of that in Arp 220. Based on the distribution of H2CO emission in NGC 6240, which has both active galactic nuclei and an extreme starburst, the H2CO megamaser is likely to be related to the effect of the starburst instead of nuclear activity. Radio continuum cannot be the inversion mechanism of H2CO megamasers, because the two H2CO concentrations in NGC 6240 are not associated with radio continuum emission. Instead, with the association of near infrared H2 emission, shock dynamics may produce the inverted population of H2CO needed to generate megamasers.
We study the global star formation law, the relation between the gas and star formation rate （SFR） in a sample of 130 local galaxies with infrared （IR） luminosities spanning over three orders of magnitude （109-1012 Lo）, which includes 91 normal spiral galaxies and 39 （ultra）luminous IR galaxies [（U）LIRGs]. We derive their total （atomic and molecular） gas and dense molecular gas masses using newly available HI, CO and HCN data from the literature. The SFR of galaxies is determined from total IR （8-1000 μm） and 1.4 GHz radio continuum （RC） luminosities. The galaxy disk sizes are defined by the de-convolved elliptical Gaussian FWHM of the RC maps. We derive the galaxy disk-averaged SFRs and various gas surface densities, and investigate their relationships. We find that the galaxy disk-averaged surface density of dense molecular gas mass has the tightest correlation with that of SFR （scatter -0.26 dex）, and is linear in log-log space （power-law slope of N=1.03±0.02） across the full galaxy sample. The correlation between the total gas and SFR surface densities for the full sample has a somewhat larger scatter （-0.48 dex）, and is best fit by a power-law with slope 1.45±0.02. However, the slope changes from -1 when only normal spirals are considered, to -1.5 when more and more （U）LIRGs are included in the fitting. When different CO-to-H2 conversion factors are used to infer molecular gas masses for normal galaxies and （U）LIRGs, the bi-modal relations claimed recently in CO observations of high-redshift galaxies appear to also exist in local populations of star-forming galaxies.
We analyze the feasibility of estimating the stellar mass of galaxies by mid-infrared luminosities based on a large sample of galaxies cross-identified from Spitzer SWIRE fields and the SDSS spectrographic survey.We derived the formulae to calculate the stellar mass by using IRAC 3.6μm and 4.5μm luminosities.The massto-luminosity ratios of IRAC 3.6μm and 4.5μm luminosities are more sensitive to the star formation history of galaxies than to other factors,such as the intrinsic extinction,metallicity and star formation rate.To remove the effect of star formation history,we used g-r color to recalibrate the formulae and obtain a better result.Researchers must be more careful when estimating the stellar mass of low metallicity galaxies using our formulae.Due to the emission from dust heated by the hottest young stars,luminous infrared galaxies present higher IRAC 4.5μm luminosities compared to IRAC 3.6μm luminosities.For most of type-Ⅱ AGNs,the nuclear activity cannot enhance 3.6μm and 4.5μm luminosities compared with normal galaxies.Star formation in our AGNhosting galaxies is also very weak,almost all of which are early-type galaxies.
