A 3 mm Spectral Line Survey toward the Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 3627

Abstract

Abstract We conduct spectral line survey observations in the 3 mm band toward a spiral arm, a bar-end, and a nuclear region of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 3627 with the IRAM 30 m telescope and the Nobeyama 45 m telescope. Additional observations are performed toward the spiral arm and the bar-end in the 2 mm band. We detect 8, 11, and 9 molecular species in the spiral arm, the bar-end, and the nuclear region, respectively. Star formation activities are different among the three regions, and in particular, the nucleus of NGC 3627 is known as a low-ionization nuclear emission region/Seyfert 2 type nucleus. In spite of these physical differences, the chemical composition shows impressive similarities among the three regions. This result means that the characteristic chemical composition associated with these regions is insensitive to the local physical conditions such as star formation rate, because such local effects are smeared out by extended quiescent molecular gas on scales of 1 kpc. Moreover, the observed chemical compositions are also found to be similar to those of molecular clouds in our Galaxy and the spiral arm of M51, whose elemental abundances are close to those in NGC 3627. Therefore, this study provides us with a standard template of the chemical composition of extended molecular clouds with the solar metallicity in nearby galaxies.