Physical Properties of Molecular Clouds at 2 parsec Resolution in the
  Low-Metallicity Dwarf Galaxy NGC 6822 and the Milky Way
  We present the ALMA survey of CO(2-1) emission from the 1/5 solar
metallicity, Local Group dwarf galaxy NGC 6822. We achieve high (0.9 arcsec ~ 2
pc) spatial resolution while covering large area: four 250 pc x 250 pc regions
that encompass ~2/3 of NGC 6822's star formation. In these regions, we resolve
~150 compact CO clumps that have small radii (~2-3 pc), narrow line width (~1
km/s), and low filling factor across the galaxy. This is consistent with other
recent studies of low metallicity galaxies, but here shown with a 15 times
larger sample. At parsec scales, CO emission correlates with 8 micron emission
better than with 24 micron emission and anti-correlates with Halpha, so that
PAH emission may be an effective tracer of molecular gas at low metallicity.
The properties of the CO clumps resemble those of similar-size structures in
Galactic clouds except of slightly lower surface brightness and CO-to-H2 ratio
~1-2 times the Galactic value. The clumps exist inside larger atomic-molecular
complexes with masses typical for giant molecular cloud. Using dust to trace H2
for the entire complex, we find CO-to-H2 to be ~20-25 times the Galactic value,
but with strong dependence on spatial scale and variations between complexes
that may track their evolutionary state. The H2-to-HI ratio is low globally and
only mildly above unity within the complexes. The SFR-to-H2 ratio is ~3-5 times
higher in the complexes than in massive disk galaxies, but after accounting for
the bias from targeting star-forming regions, we conclude that the global
molecular gas depletion time may be as long as in massive disk galaxies.
