Cold gas in group-dominant elliptical galaxies

E. O'Sullivan, F. Combes, S. Hamer, Philippe Salomé, A. Babul, S. Raychaudhury

OAI: oai:purehost.bath.ac.uk:publications/6fb9fe30-0f9e-4181-a1d7-9761825ddfdd • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424835

We present IRAM 30m telescope observations of the CO(1-0) and (2-1) lines in a sample of 11 group-dominant elliptical galaxies selected from the CLoGS nearby groups sample. Our observations confirm the presence of molecular gas in 4 of the 11 galaxies at >4 sigma significance, and combining these with data from the literature we find a detection rate of 43+-14%, comparable to the detection rate for nearby radio galaxies, suggesting that group-dominant ellipticals may be more likely to contain molecular gas than their non-central counterparts. Those group-dominant galaxies which are detected typically contain ~2x10^8 Msol of molecular gas, and although most have low star formation rates (

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