Ueda, J., Iono, D., Petitpas, Glen R., Yun, M. S., Ho, P. T. P., Kawabe, R., Mao, R. -Q, Martín, S., Matsushita, S., Peck, A. B., Tamura, Y., Wang, J., Wang, Z., Wilson, C. D., Zhang, Qizhou, Sun, W. -H, Xu, C. K., Scoville, N. Z., and Sanders, D. B. 2013. "Unveiling the Physical Properties and Kinematics of Molecular Gas in the Antennae Galaxies with the SMA." from Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series. 477, 311.
We present a ˜1″ (100 pc) resolution CO(3-2) map of the Antennae galaxies obtained with the Submillimeter Array. We find that only < 30% of the GMAs spatially coincides with the optically detected star clusters, suggesting that the bulk of the CO (3-2) emission traces the regions with very recent or near future star formation activity. A high CO (3-2)/(1-0) ratio is seen in both nuclei and the southern complexes in the overlap region. Higher radiation field associated with intense star formation can account for the nucleus of NGC 4038 and the overlap region, but the nuclear region of NGC 4039 show relatively little star formation or AGN activities and cannot easily explained. We show kinematical evidence that the high line ratio in NGC 4039 is possibly caused by gas inflow into the counter-rotating central disk.
