A relationship between the integrated CO intensity and the radio continuum emission in spiral galaxies

In an effort to determine the role played by cosmic ray electrons and interstellar radiation fields on the collapse of molecular clouds, a survey was begun to investigate the relationship between the radio continuum brightness emission and the integrated CO intensity in spiral galaxies. The investigation was done on two scales; a global galaxy to galaxy comparison of integrated disk values, and a ring-averaged study over the disks of individual galaxies. For the large-scale survey, radio continuum flux densities integrated over the full disk at 1.49 GHz were taken from Condon (1987) and the total CO fluxes were taken from Verter (1985). The galaxies with values included in the two catalogs are displayed. It can be seen that a good correlation exists between the integrated CO emission and radio continuum emission.