The Astrophysical Journal, 823:76 (17pp), 2016 June 1 doi:10.3847/0004-637X/823/2/76 © 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. EVOLUTION OF MOLECULAR AND ATOMIC GAS PHASES IN THE MILKY WAY Jin Koda1,2, Nick Scoville2, and Mark Heyer3 1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800, USA;
[email protected] 2 California Institute of Technology, MC 249-17, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 3 Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received 2015 October 9; accepted 2016 March 18; published 2016 May 24 ABSTRACT We analyze radial and azimuthal variations of the phase balance between the molecular and atomic interstellar medium (ISM) in the Milky Way (MW) using archival CO( J=1-0) and HI 21 cm data. In particular, the azimuthal variations—between the spiral arm and interarm regions—are analyzed without any explicit definition of the spiral arm locations. We show that the molecular gas mass fraction, i.e., fmol =SHHIH22() S +S , varies predominantly in the radial direction: starting from ~100% at the center, remaining 50% to R ~ 6 kpc and decreasing to ∼10%–20% at R = 8.5 kpc when averaged over the whole disk thickness (from ∼100% to ≳60%, then to ∼50% in the midplane). Azimuthal, arm-interarm variations are secondary: only ~20% in the globally molecule-dominated inner MW, but becoming larger, ∼40%–50%, in the atom-dominated outskirts. This suggests ( ) that in the inner MW the gas remains highly molecular fmol > 50% as it moves from an interarm region into a spiral arm and back into the next interarm region.