Kennicutt-Schmidt Law in the Central Region of NGC 4321 as Seen by ALMA

We present the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) cycle-0 science verification data of the CO(1–0) line emission in the central region of NGC 4321 (also known as M100) at the distance of 17.1 Mpc and VLA, L-band data of HI of the same galaxy. We have drawn the center area of M100 in the (12)CO(J = 1–0) line with the resolution of (3.87″ × 2.53″) as viewed by ALMA, along with HI and Spitzer 8 and 3.6 μm data. The relationship between the surface density of molecular gas mass ∑H(2) and that of star formation rate ∑SFR has been investigated, in addition to the relationship between the surface density of the neutral atomic hydrogen mass and that of ∑SFR (Kennicutt–Schmidt law) in this galaxy with a high spatial resolution. The results indicate that a significant correlation exists between the SFR surface density and the molecular gas mass density in the ~2 kpc region. The power-law index has been determined for three regions: center, upper and lower arms. The value of this index in the center region is 1.13, which follows the traditional (K-S) law and indicates that the molecular gas is affected by star formation.