UNVEILING THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND KINEMATICS OF MOLECULAR GAS IN THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES (NGC 4038/9) THROUGH HIGH-RESOLUTION CO (J = 3-2) OBSERVATIONS

We present a ~1" (100 pc) resolution [sup 12]CO (3-2) map of the nearby intermediate-stage interacting galaxy pair NGC 4038/9 (the Antennae galaxies) obtained with the Submillimeter Array. We find that half the CO (3-2) emission originates in the overlap region where most of the tidally induced star formation had been previously found in shorter wavelength images, with the rest being centered on each of the nuclei. The gross distribution is consistent with lower resolution single-dish images, but we show for the first time the detailed distribution of the warm and dense molecular gas across this galaxy pair at resolutions comparable to the size of a typical giant molecular complex. We show kinematical evidence that the high line ratio in NGC 4039 is possibly caused by gas inflow into the counter-rotating central disk.