| Abstract | As a part of our 18-cm OH and 21-cm HI survey of luminous far- infrared galaxies. we present here H I data obtained at Nancay for 88 IRAS galaxies, with FIR luminosity above 10^10^ solar luminosity. Among them, 64 are measured here for the first time. When restricting to radial velocities smaller than 11000 km s^-1^, the detection rate is equal to 85%, independent of the distance. These galaxies appear as giant ones, in dimension, total mass and total blue luminosity. All these parameters increase with increasing FIR luminosity. Extreme FIR luminosity is thus related to gigantism, which could be the result of mergers. These galaxies are also deficient in their relative H content, in the sense that their global relative H I content, (for example the mean H projected density) is significantly smaller than in classical galaxies of the Hubble sequence. This deficiency appears to be correlated with the star forming activity, and corresponds to a larger fraction of H_2_ molecular gas. |
