The CO-CAVITY project: Molecular gas in void galaxies

Abstract

Galaxies in voids have experienced a different environment than those in denser environments during their entire existence. Their properties are possibly different from galaxies in denser media. The CO-CAVITY project aims at studying the molecular gas contents of void galaxies and compare with non-void ones. To this end, 106 galaxies drawn from the mother CAVITY Integral Field Unit (IFU) sample have been observed with the EMIR receiver at the IRAM 30m telescope in Pico Veleta targeting the CO(1–0) and CO(2–1) lines. The data gathered allows deriving the star formation efficiency, molecular-to-atomic gas mass ratio and molecular-to-stellar mass ratio. The preliminary results presented here suggest that in general, there are no significant differences (within the errors) in the molecular gas content of void and control samples, although some deviations are observed in certain ranges when splitting the samples in stellar mass bins.