Starbursts triggered by central overpressure. ii. A parameter study

Abstract

A parameter study is made of the radiative shock compression of a disk molecular cloud due to the high pressure of the central molecular intercloud medium, after the cloud has fallen into the central region of a galaxy following a galaxy interaction. The dependence of the compression on the disk cloud and central gas parameters has been studied. We show that f_shell, the fraction of cloud mass compressed in the outer shell that becomes unstable, is a function of only the external pressure, the cloud radius, and the cloud density. We find that for a wide range of values for the input parameters, f_shell is high and lies between 0.75 to 0.90. The fraction f_shell is not sensitively dependent on the value of the central gas pressure because the initial inward shock velocity is proportional to the square root of the central pressure, and at later stages it is determined mainly by the self-gravity of the shocked shell. Thus, star formation triggered in disk clouds by compression by the central overpressure, as proposed by Jog & Das, is a general triggering mechanism and is valid as long as the central gas has an overpressure of even a factor of a few higher than that of the incoming disk molecular clouds.We apply the mechanism to the galaxies for which the central gas parameters are known; for example, IC 342 and NGC 1808. We find that in both cases a large fraction of the cloud mass will be compressed. Hence, these galaxies should show a central starburst, provided that there is a substantial gas infall rate from the disk to the central region. This agrees with observations, in that NGC 1808 with gas infall due to galaxy interaction has a central starburst, while IC 342 does not.