The EDGE-CALIFA Survey: An integral field unit-based integrated molecular gas database for galaxy evolution studies in the Local Universe

¹ Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, University of Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
² Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
³ Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Astronomía, AP 106, Ensenada 22800, BC, Mexico
⁴ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, 38205, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
⁶ Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
⁷ Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Concepción, Barrio Universitario, Concepción, Chile
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, 4-181 CCIS, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada
⁹ Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 West 18 th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

^★ Corresponding author: dcolombo@uni-bonn.de

Received: 26 November 2024
Accepted: 9 May 2025

Abstract

Studying galaxy evolution requires knowledge not only of the stellar properties, but also of the interstellar medium (in particular the molecular phase) out of which stars form, using a statistically significant and unbiased sample of galaxies. To this end, we introduce here the integrated Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (iEDGE), a collection of integrated stellar and nebular emission lines, and molecular gas properties from 643 galaxies in the local Universe. These galaxies are drawn from the CALIFA datasets, and are followed up in CO lines by the APEX, CARMA, and ACA telescopes. As this database is assembled from data coming from a heterogeneous set of telescopes (including IFU optical data and single-dish and interferometric CO data), we adopted a series of techniques (tapering, spatial and spectral smoothing, and aperture correction) to homogenise the data. Due to the application of these techniques, the database contains measurements from the inner regions of the galaxies and for the full galaxy extent. We used the database to study the fundamental star formation relationships between star formation rate (SFR), stellar mass (M_*), and molecular gas mass (M_mol) across galaxies with different morphologies. We observed that the diagrams defined by these quantities are bi-modal, with early-type passive objects well separated from spiral star-forming galaxies. Additionally, while the molecular gas fraction (f_mol = M_mol/M_*) decreases homogeneously across these two types of galaxies, the star formation efficiency (SFE=SFR/M_mol) in the inner regions of passive galaxies is almost two orders of magnitude lower compared to the global values. This indicates that inside-out quenching requires not only low f_mol, but also strongly reduced SFE in the galactic centres.