KILOGAS

KILOGAS is a large ALMA program aimed at transforming our understanding of the drivers of star formation activity in galaxies. We will map CO(2-1) at 1 kpc resolution in a sample of ~500 galaxies, an order of magnitude more than in any existing survey, and crucially representative of the entire local population (in terms of mass, SFR, size, morphology and environment). All galaxies have optical integral field spectroscopy, providing resolution-matched SFR, metallicity, and M* maps, as well as ionized gas and stellar kinematics. KILOGAS will reveal in detail how and why molecular gas availability and star formation efficiency vary within galaxies and across the population. The main science questions to be tackled are: (I) What determines how the fuel for star formation is distributed (size, density, morphology and kinematics of the CO discs)? and (II) What regulates star formation efficiency and quenching? With its unprecedented sample size and completeness, KILOGAS will have long-term legacy value, enabling a huge range of investigations both for the survey team and the community, and grounding high-redshift and numerical studies.

Sample characteristics

The KILOGAS targets are selected from the MaNGA and SAMI optical IFU surveys to be at 0.001<z<0.006 and to cover a wide range of stellar masses without selection on star formation activity, morphology, size, or any other such additional parameter. This makes the KILOGAS sample not only significantly larger, but also far diverse and complete than any other previous survey with matched-resolution CO and optical spectroscopic data.