H I content of selected mid-infrared bright, starburst blue compact dwarf galaxies

We report measurements of H I content in 11 nearby, actively star-forming, blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs) from 21 cm observations with the Arecibo telescope. These BCDs, selected by their red (W2[4.6 μm]−W3[12 μm]>3.8 mag) and bright mid-infrared (MIR) emission (W4[22 μm]<7.6 mag), have high specific star formation rates (median sSFR ∼10^−7.8 yr⁻¹), similar to high redshift galaxies. H I emission was detected in six sources. We analyse our new detections in the context of previous H I observations of 218 dwarf irregulars (dIs) and BCDs in the literature. The M_{H I}–M_∗ relation resulting from our observations confirms the dominating fraction of H I gas among baryons in galaxies with lower stellar masses. This Arecibo BCD sample has significantly lower median H I depletion time-scales (τ_{H I} ∼ 0.3 Gyr) than other dIs/BCDs (∼ 6.3 Gyr) in the literature. The majority of the sources (10/11) in the Arecibo sample are very red in W1[3.4 μm]−W2[4.6 μm] colour (>0.8 mag) implying the presence of warm dust. We investigate the relation of τ_HI with stellar mass (M_∗) and sSFR. We find that τ_{H I} is significantly anticorrelated with M_∗ for higher sSFR (>10^−8.5 yr⁻¹) and with sSFR for higher stellar mass (> 10^7.5 M_☉) dwarf galaxies. The high sSFR for the BCDs in the Arecibo observed sample is mainly due to their high atomic gas star formation efficiency (SFE) or low τ_H I. The low τ_{H I} or high SFE in these sources is possibly due to runaway star formation in compact and dense super star clusters.