# Bar-driven Transport of Molecular Gas in Spiral Galaxies: Observational Evidence

## 

The NRO-OVRO CO imaging survey has provided molecular gas distributions in the centers of 20 nearby spiral galaxies at $`300`$ pc resolution (Sakamoto et al. 1999a). It is found from the survey that central condensations of molecular gas with sub-kpc sizes and $`10^8`$$`10^9M_{}`$ masses are prevalent in $`L^{}`$ galaxies. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 1, the degree of gas concentration to the central kpc (estimated from comparison with single-dish data) is found to be higher in barred galaxies than in unbarred systems (Sakamoto et al. 1999b). This is the first statistical evidence for the higher central concentration of molecular gas (CO) in barred galaxies, strongly supporting the theory of bar-driven gas transport. To account for the excess gas in barred nuclei, more than half of molecular gas in the central kpc of a barred galaxy must have been transported there from outside by the bar. The time-averaged rate of gas inflow, $`\dot{M}`$, is statistically estimated (through the gas consumption rates estimated from H$`\alpha `$ and far-IR) to be larger than 0.1 – 1 $`M_{}`$ yr<sup>-1</sup>. The degree of gas concentration also helps to test the predictions of bar dissolution and secular morphological evolution induced by bar-driven gas transport (Norman et al 1996; Pfenniger in this volume). Our current data suggest that bar-dissolution times are longer than the consumption times of central gas concentrations in barred galaxies, and thus prefer slow ($`t>10^8`$$`10^{10}`$ yr) bar-dissolution. A search for non-barred galaxies with high gas concentration, presumably galaxies just after quick bar dissolution, is important to better constrain the bar-dissolution timescale.

There have been a few other lines of observational evidence for the bar-driven gas transport.

Table 1 summarizes the pieces of evidence and their properties. All of them support bar-driven gas inflow and, though each of them provides different types of information, they are complementary with each other (e.g., some of them are statistical and the others are not, some can give $`\dot{M}`$ while others give instantaneous $`\dot{M}`$). A next step would be to combine these methods, with increasing sample size, in order to construct a sequence of mass transfer, star formation, and morphological changes in galaxies. Galaxy evolution along the Hubble sequence is now within the reach of observational tests.

### Acknowledgments.

The CO survey and the subsequent analysis were made in collaboration with S. K. Okumura, S. Ishizuki, and N. Z. Scoville.

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