M51 ISM structures from the CO maps of PAWS

We break the PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS; Schinnerer+ 2013ApJ...779...42S) into 370pc and 1.1kpc resolution elements, and within each we estimate the molecular gas depletion time ({tau}_Dep_^mol^), the star-formation efficiency per free-fall time ({epsilon}_ff_), and the mass-weighted cloud-scale (40pc) properties of the molecular gas: surface density, {Sigma}, line width, {sigma}, and b={Sigma}/{sigma}^2^{propto}{alpha}_vir_^-1^, a parameter that traces the boundedness of the gas.

We show that the cloud-scale surface density appears to be a reasonable proxy for mean volume density. Applying this, we find a typical star-formation efficiency per free-fall time, {epsilon}_ff_(<{Sigma}_40pc_>)~0.3%-0.36%, lower than adopted in many models and found for local clouds. Furthermore, the efficiency per free-fall time anti-correlates with both {Sigma} and {sigma}, in some tension with turbulent star-formation models.