THE DENSE GAS IN THE LARGEST MOLECULAR COMPLEXES OF THE ANTENNAE: HCN AND HCO+ OBSERVATIONS OF NGC 4038/39 USING ALMA

We present observations of the dense molecular gas tracers HCN, HNC, and HCO+ in the J=1-0 transition using ALMA. We supplement our datasets with previous observations of CO J=1-0, which traces the total molecular gas content. We separate the Antennae into 7 bright regions in which we detect emission from all three molecules, including the nuclei of NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, 5 super giant molecular complexes in the overlap region and 2 additional bright clouds. We find that the ratio of L(HCN)/L(CO), which traces the dense molecular gas fraction, is greater in the two nuclei (L(HCN)/L(CO) ~ 0.07 - 0.08) than in the overlap region (L(HCN)/L(CO) = 5% - 10% of the PDR surface heating to the total heating budget. Finally, the ratio of L(HCN)/L(HCO+) varies from ~1 in the nucleus of NGC 4038 down to ~0.5 in the overlap region. The lower ratio in the overlap region may be due to an increase in the cosmic ray rate from the increased supernova rate within this region.