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Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., A fully sampled and hitherto highest resolution and sensitivity observation of neutral hydrogen (H I) in the Leo Triplet (NGC 3628, M 65/NGC 3623, and M 66/NGC 3627) reveals six H I structures beyond the three galaxies. We present detailed results of the morphologies and kinematics of these structures, which can be used for future simulations. In particular, we detect a two-arm structure in the plume of NGC 3628 for the first time, which can be explained by a tidal interaction model. The optical counterpart of the plume is mainly associated with the southern arm. The connecting part (base) of the plume (directed eastward) with NGC 3628 is located at the blueshifted (western) side of NGC 3628. Two bases appear to be associated with the two arms of the plume. A clump with a reversed velocity gradient (relative to the velocity gradient of M 66) and a newly detected tail, that is to say M 66SE, is found in the southeast of M 66. We suspect that M 66SE represents gas from NGC 3628, which was captured by M 66 in the recent interaction between the two galaxies. Meanwhile gas is falling toward M 66, resulting in features previously observed in the southeastern part of M 66, such as large line widths and double peaks. An upside-down “Y”-shaped H I gas component (M 65S) is detected in the south of M 65, which suggests that M 65 may also have been involved in the interaction. We strongly encourage modern hydrodynamical simulations of this interacting group of galaxies to reveal the origin of the gaseous debris surrounding all three galaxies. © G. Wu et al. 2022., This work was funded by the CAS “Light of West China” Program under grant No. 2018-XBQNXZ-B-024 and the National Natural Science foundation of China under grant Nos. 11433008, 12173075, 12103082, and 11973076. G.W. acknowledges the support from Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS. DMD acknowledges financial support from the Talentia Senior Program (through the incentive ASE-136) from Secretaría General de Universidades, Investigación y Tecnología, de la Junta de Andalucía. DMD acknowledges funding from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). DMD acknowledges funding from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCI (Project PID2020-114581GB-C21/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). This research made use of astrodendro, a Python package to compute dendrograms of Astronomical data (http://www.dendrograms.org/). The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Arecibo Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by the University of Central Florida and in alliance with Universidad Ana G. Mendez, and Yang Enterprises, Inc.

Dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) at redshift z$\geq$1 are among the most vigorously star-forming galaxies in the Universe. However, their dense ($\geq$10$^5$ cm$^{-3}$ ) gas phase - typically traced by HCN(1-0) - remains almost entirely unexplored: only two DSFGs have been detected in HCN(1-0) to date. We present results of a JVLA survey of the J=1-0 transition of HCN, HCO+, and HNC(1-0) in six strongly lensed DSFGs at z = 2.5 - 3.3, effectively doubling the number of DSFGs with deep observations of these lines. We detect HCN(1-0) emission in one source (J1202+5354, 4.4$\sigma$), with a tentative HCO+ (1-0) detection in another (J1609+6045, 3.3$\sigma$). Spectral stacking yields strict upper limits on the HCN/FIR ($\leq$3.6$\times$10$^{-4}$) and HCN/CO(1-0) ratios ($\leq$0.045). The inferred HCN/FIR ratios (a proxy for the star-formation efficiency) are consistent with those in z$\sim$0 FIR-luminous starbursts. However, the HCN/CO ratios - a proxy for the dense-gas fraction - are a factor of a few lower than suggested by the two previous DSFG detections. Our results imply that most DSFGs have low dense-gas fractions. A comparison with Krumholz & Thompson (2007) models of star-forming galaxies indicates that the bulk of gas in DSFGs is at lower densities ($\approx$10$^2$ cm$^{-3}$ ), similar to "normal" star-forming galaxies, rather than ultraluminous starbursts., Comment: Submitted to A&A 28th April 2022, accepted 19th July 2022

We present the CO isotopologue Line Atlas within the Whirpool galaxy Survey (CLAWS) based on an IRAM 30-m large programme which provides a benchmark study of numerous, faint CO isotopologues in the mm-wavelength regime across the full disc of M51 (NGC 5194). The survey's core goal is to use the low-J CO isotopologue lines to constrain CO excitation and chemistry, and therefrom the local physical conditions of the gas. In this survey paper, we describe the CLAWS observing and data reduction strategies. We map the J=1-0 and 2-1 transitions of the CO isotopologues $^{12}$CO,$^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O and C$^{17}$O, as well as several supplementary lines within the 1 mm and 3 mm window (CN(1-0), CS(2-1), CH$_3$OH(2-1), N$_2$H$^+$(1-0), HC$_3$N(10-9)) at ~1 kpc resolution. A total observation time of 149 h offers unprecedented sensitivity. We use these data to explore several CO isotopologue line ratios in detail, study their radial (and azimuthal) trends and investigate whether changes in line ratios stem from changes in ISM properties such as gas temperatures, densities or chemical abundances. For example, we find negative radial trends for the $^{13}$CO}/$^{12}$CO, C$^{18}$O/$^{12}$CO and C$^{18}$O/$^{13}$CO line ratios in their J=1-0 transitions. We also find variations with local environment, such as higher $^{12}$CO(2-1)/(1-0) or $^{13}$CO/$^{12}$CO(1-0) line ratios in interarm regions compared to spiral arm regions. We propose that these aforementioned variations of CO line ratios are most likely due to a variation of the optical depth, while abundance variations due to selective nucleosynthesis on a galaxy-wide scale could also play a role. We also study the CO spectral line energy distribution (SLED) using archival JCMT $^{12}$CO(3-2) data and find a variation of the SLED shape with local environmental parameters further underlying changes in optical depth, gas temperatures or densities., 29 pages, 22 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

We present MeerKAT neutral hydrogen (HI) observations of the Fornax A group, that is likely falling into the Fornax cluster for the first time. Our HI image is sensitive to 1.4 x 10$^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$ over 44.1 km s$^{-1}$, where we detect HI in 10 galaxies and a total of 1.12 x 10$^{9}$ Msol of HI in the intra-group medium (IGM). We search for signs of pre-processing in the 12 group galaxies with confirmed optical redshifts that reside within our HI image. There are 9 galaxies that show evidence of pre-processing and we classify the pre-processing status of each galaxy, according to their HI morphology and gas (atomic and molecular) scaling relations. Galaxies yet to experience pre-processing have extended HI disks, a high HI content with a H$_2$-to-HI ratio an order of magnitude lower than the median for their stellar mass. Galaxies currently being pre-processed display HI tails, truncated HI disks with typical gas ratios. Galaxies in the advanced stages of pre-processing are HI deficient. If there is any HI, they have lost their outer HI disk and efficiently converted their HI to H$_2$, resulting in H$_2$-to-HI ratios an order of magnitude higher than the median for their stellar mass. The central, massive galaxy in our group underwent a 10:1 merger 2 Gyr ago, and ejected 6.6 - 11.2 x 10$^{8}$ Msol of HI that we detect as clouds and streams in the IGM, some forming coherent structures up to 220 kpc in length. We also detect giant (100 kpc) ionised hydrogen (H$\alpha$) filaments in the IGM, likely from cool gas being removed (and ionised) from an infalling satellite. The H$\alpha$ filaments are situated within the hot halo of NGC 1316 and some regions contain HI. We speculate that the H$\alpha$ and multiphase gas is supported by magnetic pressure (possibly assisted by the AGN), such that the hot gas can condense and form HI that survives in the hot halo for cosmological timescales., Comment: 18 pages, 9 figured. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A)

We thank the anonymous referee for their helpful comments. This paper makes use of the ALMA data: ALMA #2018.1.00035.L, #2013.1.00999.S, and #2015.1.01425.S. ALMA is a partnership of the ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by the ESO, AUI/NRAO, and NAOJ. K. K. acknowledges support from the Swedish Research Council (2015-05580), and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. K. Kohno acknowledges the JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17H06130 and the NAOJ ALMA Scientific Research Grant Number 2017-06B. F.E.B. acknowledges support from ANID grants CATA-Basal AFB-170002, FONDECYT Regular 1190818, 1200495 and Millennium Science Initiative ICN12_009. D. E. acknowledges support from a Beatriz Galindo senior fellowship (BG20/00224) from the Ministry of Science and Innovation. G. E. M. and F. V. acknowledge the Villum Fonden research grant 13160 "Gas to stars, stars to dust: tracing star formation across cosmic time"? and the Cosmic Dawn Center of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under then grant No. 140. F. V. acknowledges support from the Carlsberg Foundation Research Grant CF18-0388 "Galaxies: Rise and Death". A.Z. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel., Context. The properties of galaxies at redshift z>6 hold the key to our understanding of the early stages of galaxy evolution and can potentially identify the sources of the ultraviolet radiation that give rise to the epoch of reionisation. The far-infrared cooling line of [C II] at 158 mu m is known to be bright and correlate with the star formation rate (SFR) of low-redshift galaxies, and hence is also suggested to be an important tracer of star formation and interstellar medium properties for very high-redshift galaxies. Aims. With the aim to study the interstellar medium properties of gravitationally lensed galaxies at z>6, we search for [C II] and thermal dust emission in a sample of 52 > 6 galaxies observed by the ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey. Methods. We perform our analysis using LINESTACKER, stacking both [C II] and continuum emission. The target sample is selected from multiple catalogues, and the sample galaxies have spectroscopic redshift or low-uncertainty photometric redshifts (sigma(z)6 galaxies but likely is under-luminous compared to the local L-[CII]-SFR relationship. We discuss potential biases and possible physical effects that may be the cause of the non-detection. Further, the upper limit on the dust continuum implies that less than half of the star formation is obscured., Swedish Research Council, European Commission 2015-05580, Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) JP17H06130, NAOJ ALMA Scientific Research Grant 2017-06B, ANID grants CATA-Basal AFB-170002, Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT FONDECYT 1190818 1200495, Millennium Science Initiative ICN12_009, Beatriz Galindo senior fellowship from the Ministry of Science and Innovation BG20/00224, Villum Fonden research grant 13160, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond 140, Carlsberg Foundation CF18-0388, Ministry of Science, Technology and Space (MOST), Israel

Context. Galaxies that hosted many core-collapse supernova (SN) explosions can be used to study the conditions necessary for the formation of massive stars. NGC 2770 was dubbed an SN factory because it hosted four core-collapse SNe in 20 years (three type Ib and one type IIn). Its star formation rate (SFR) was reported to not be enhanced and, therefore, not compatible with such a high SN rate. Aims. We aim to explain the high SN rate of NGC 2770. Methods. We used archival HI line data for NGC 2770 and reinterpreted the Hα and optical continuum data. Results. Even though the continuum-based SFR indicators do not yield high values, the dust-corrected Hα luminosity implies a high SFR, consistent with the high SN rate. Such a disparity between the SFR estimators is an indication of recently enhanced star formation activity because the continuum indicators trace long timescales of the order of 100 Myr, unlike the line indicators, which trace timescales of the order of 10 Myr. Hence, the unique feature of NGC 2770 compared to other galaxies is the fact that it was observed very shortly after the enhancement of the SFR. It also has high dust extinction, E(B - V) above 1 mag. We provide support for the hypothesis that the increased SFR in NGC 2770 is due to the interaction with its companion galaxies. We report an HI bridge between NGC 2770 and its closest companion and the existence of a total of four companions within 100 kpc (one identified for the first time). There are no clear HI concentrations close to the positions of SNe in NGC 2770 such as those detected for hosts of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and broad-lined SNe type Ic (IcBL). This suggests that the progenitors of type Ib SNe are not born out of recently accreted atomic gas, as was suggested for GRB and IcBL SN progenitors. © ESO 2020., M.J.M. acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre, Poland through the SONATA BIS grant 2018/30/E/ST9/00208, and of the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission. A.d.U.P. and C.C.T. acknowledge the support from Ramon y Cajal fellowships (RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984) and from the Spanish research project AYA2017-89384-P. A.L. acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre, Poland through the SONATA BIS grant 2018/30/E/ST9/00208. J.H. was supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant (project number 16599). M.P.K. acknowledges support from the First TEAM grant of the Foundation for Polish Science No. POIR.04.04.00-00-5D21/18-00. P.K. is partially supported by the BMBF project 05A17PC2 for D-MeerKAT. The WSRT is operated by the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy with financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

We investigate the relation between the detection of the 11.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) feature in the nuclear (∼24-230 pc) regions of 22 nearby Seyfert galaxies and the properties of the cold molecular gas. For the former we use ground-based (0.3-0.6″ resolution) mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy. The cold molecular gas is traced by ALMA and NOEMA high (0.2-1.1″) angular resolution observations of the CO(2-1) transition. Galaxies with a nuclear detection of the 11.3 μm PAH feature contain more cold molecular gas (median 1.6 × 107 MO ) and have higher column densities (N(H2) = 2 × 1023 cm-2) over the regions sampled by the mid-IR slits than those without a detection. This suggests that molecular gas plays a role in shielding the PAH molecules in the harsh environments of Seyfert nuclei. Choosing the PAH molecule naphthalene as an illustration, we compute its half-life in the nuclear regions of our sample when exposed to 2.5 keV hard X-ray photons. We estimate shorter half-lives for naphthalene in nuclei without a 11.3 μm PAH detection than in those with a detection. The Spitzer/IRS PAH ratios on circumnuclear scales (∼4″ ∼ 0.25-1.3 kpc) are in between model predictions for neutral and partly ionized PAHs. However, Seyfert galaxies in our sample with the highest nuclear H2 column densities are not generally closer to the neutral PAH tracks. This is because in the majority of our sample galaxies, the CO(2-1) emission in the inner ∼4″ is not centrally peaked and in some galaxies traces circumnuclear sites of strong star formation activity. Spatially resolved observations with the MIRI medium-resolution spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to distinguish the effects of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and star formation on the PAH emission in nearby AGN., With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 16 is a prototypical compact group of galaxies in an intermediate stage of the previously proposed evolutionary sequence, where its galaxies are losing gas to the intra-group medium (IGrM). The group hosts galaxies that are H I-normal, H I-poor, and centrally active with both AGNs and starbursts, in addition to a likely new member and a H I tidal feature of similar to 160 kpc in length. Despite being a well-studied group at all wavelengths, no previous study of HCG16 has focused on its extraordinary H I component. Aims. The characteristics of HCG16 make it an ideal case study for exploring which processes are likely to dominate the late stages of evolution in compact groups, and ultimately determine their end states. In order to build a coherent picture of the evolution of this group we make use of the multi-wavelength data available, but focus particularly on H I as a tracer of interactions and evolutionary phase. Methods. We reprocess archival VLA L-band observations of HCG16 using the multi-scale CLEAN algorithm to accurately recover diffuse features. Tidal features and galaxies are separated in three dimensions using the SlicerAstro package. The H I deficiency of the separated galaxies is assessed against the benchmark of recent scaling relations of isolated galaxies. This work has been performed with particular attention to reproducibility and is accompanied by a complete workflow to reproduce all the final data products, figures, and results. Results. Despite the clear disruption of the H I component of HCG16 we find that it is not globally H I deficient, even though HCG16a and b have lost the majority of their H I and almost 50% of the group's H I is in the IGrM. The H I content of HCG16d shows highly disturbed kinematics, with only a marginal velocity gradient that is almost perpendicular to its optical major axis. The tail of similar to 160 kpc in length extending towards the southeast appears to be part of an even larger structure which spatially and kinematically connects NGC848 to the northwest corner of the group. Conclusions. This study indicates that in the recent past (similar to 1 Gyr) galaxies HCG16a and b likely underwent major interactions that unbound gas without triggering significant star formation. This gas was then swept away by a close, high-speed encounter with NGC848. The starburst events HCG16c and d, likely initiated by their mutual interaction, triggered galactic winds which, in the case of HCG16d, appear to have disrupted its H I reservoir. The tidal features still connected to all these galaxies indicate that more H I will soon be lost to the IGrM, while that which remains in the discs will likely be consumed by star-formation episodes triggered by their ongoing interaction. This is expected to result in a collection of gas-poor galaxies embedded in a diffuse H I structure, which will gradually (over several Gyr) be evaporated by the UV background, resembling the final stage of the evolutionary model of compact groups., MGJ is supported by a Juan de la Cierva formacion fellowship. We also acknowledge support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R and RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE). This work has been supported by the Spanish Science Ministry >Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa> program under grant SEV-2017-0709. MGJ wishes to thank B. Koribalski, K. Lee-Waddell, and S. Cazzoli for helpful discussions. We also thank the referee for his thorough comments which helped to improve this paper. This project used archival data from the VLA. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This project used data obtained with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was constructed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration (full acknowledgement at legacysurvey.org/acknowledgment). This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We also acknowledge the use of the HyperLeda database (Makarov et al. 2014). This research made use of APLpy, an open-source plotting package for Python (Robitaille & Bressert 2012; Robitaille 2019), astropy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), Aladin (Bonnarel et al. 2000), mayavi (Ramachandran & Varoquaux 2011), and SAOImageDS9 (Joye & Mandel 2003).

We analyze new high spatial resolution (∼60 pc) ALMA CO(2-1) observations of the isolated luminous infrared galaxy ESO 320-G030 (d = 48 Mpc) in combination with ancillary Hubble Space Telescope optical and near infrared (IR) imaging, as well as VLT/SINFONI near-IR integral field spectroscopy. We detect a high-velocity (∼450 km s) spatially resolved (size∼2.5 kpc; dynamical time ∼3 Myr) massive (∼10 M; Ṁ ∼ 2-8 M yr) molecular outflow that has originated in the central ∼250 pc. We observe a clumpy structure in the outflowing cold molecular gas with clump sizes between 60 and 150 pc and masses between 10 and 10 M. The mass of the clumps decreases with increasing distance, while the velocity is approximately constant. Therefore, both the momentum and kinetic energy of the clumps decrease outwards. In the innermost (∼100 pc) part of the outflow, we measure a hot-to-cold molecular gas ratio of 7 × 10, which is similar to that measured in other resolved molecular outflows. We do not find evidence of an ionized phase in this outflow. The nuclear IR and radio properties are compatible with strong and highly obscured star-formation (A ∼ 4.6 mag; star formation rate ∼ 15 M yr). We do not find any evidence for the presence of an active galactic nucleus. We estimate that supernova explosions in the nuclear starburst (ν ∼ 0.2 yr) can power the observed molecular outflow. The kinetic energy and radial momentum of the cold molecular phase of the outflow correspond to about 2% and 20%, respectively, of the supernovae output. The cold molecular outflow velocity is lower than the escape velocity, so the gas will likely return to the galaxy disk. The mass loading factor is ∼0.1-0.5, so the negative feedback owing to this star-formation-powered molecular outflow is probably limited., We acknowledge support from the Spanish Plan Nacional de Astronomía y Astrofísica through grants AYA2010-21161-C02-01 and AYA2012-32295. A.A.-H. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant AYA2015-64346-C2-1-P. B.E. acknowledges funding through the European Union FP7-PEOPLE2013-IEF grant 624351

Context. Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can potentially be used as a tool to study star formation and recent gas accretion onto galaxies. However, the information about gas properties of GRB hosts is scarce. In particular, very few carbon monoxide (CO) line detections of individual GRB hosts have been reported. It has also been suggested that GRB hosts have lower molecular gas masses than expected from their star formation rates (SFRs). Aims. The objectives of this paper are to analyse molecular gas properties of the first substantial sample of GRB hosts and test whether they are deficient in molecular gas. Methods. We obtained CO(2-1) observations of seven GRB hosts with the APEX and IRAM 30 m telescopes. We analysed these data together with all other hosts with previous CO observations. From these observations we calculated the molecular gas masses of these galaxies and compared them with the expected values based on their SFRs and metallicities. Reults. We obtained detections for 3 GRB hosts (980425, 080207, and 111005A) and upper limits for the remaining 4 (031203, 060505, 060814, and 100316D). In our entire sample of 12 CO-observed GRB hosts, 3 are clearly deficient in molecular gas, even taking into account their metallicity (980425, 060814, and 080517). Four others are close to the best-fit line for other star-forming galaxies on the SFR-M2 plot (051022, 060505, 080207, and 100316D). One host is clearly molecule rich (111005A). Finally, the data for 4 GRB hosts are not deep enough to judge whether they are molecule deficient (000418, 030329, 031203, and 090423). The median value of the molecular gas depletion time, M2/SFR, of GRB hosts is ∼0.3 dex below that of other star-forming galaxies, but this result has low statistical significance. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test performed on M2/SFR shows an only ∼2σ difference between GRB hosts and other galaxies. This difference can partly be explained by metallicity effects, since the significance decreases to ∼1σ for M2/SFR versus metallicity. Conclusions. We found that any molecular gas deficiency of GRB hosts has low statistical significance and that it can be attributed to their lower metallicities; and thus the sample of GRB hosts has molecular properties that are consistent with those of other galaxies, and they can be treated as representative star-forming galaxies. However, the molecular gas deficiency can be strong for GRB hosts if they exhibit higher excitations and/or a lower CO-To-H conversion factor than we assume, which would lead to lower molecular gas masses than we derive. Given the concentration of atomic gas recently found close to GRB and supernova sites, indicating recent gas inflow, our results about the weak molecular deficiency imply that such an inflow does not enhance the SFRs significantly, or that atomic gas converts efficiently into the molecular phase, which fuels star formation. Only if the analysis of a larger GRB host sample reveals molecular deficiency (especially close to the GRB position) would this support the hypothesis of star formation that is directly fuelled by atomic gas.© ESO 2018., M.J.M. acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre, Poland through the POLONEZ grant 2015/19/P/ST9/04010; and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council; this project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 665778. A.K. acknowledges support from the Polish National Science Center grants 2014/15/B/ST9/02111and 2016/21/D/ST9/01098. J.R.R. acknowledges the support from project ESP2015-65597-C4-1-R (MINECO/FEDER). A.J.C.T. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry Project AYA2015-71718-R. J.H. was supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant (project number 16599). L.K.H. acknowledges funding from the INAF PRIN-SKA program 1.05.01.88.04. M.R.K. acknowledges support from the Australian government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP160100695).

Observations of the molecular gas over scales of 0.5 to several kpc provide crucial information on how gas moves through galaxies, especially in mergers and interacting systems, where it ultimately reaches the galaxy center, accumulates, and feeds nuclear activity. Studying the processes involved in the gas transport is an important step forward to understand galaxy evolution. 12CO, 13CO and C18O1-0 high-sensitivity ALMA observations were used to assess properties of the large-scale molecular gas reservoir and its connection to the circumnuclear molecular ring in NGC1614. The role of excitation and abundances were studied in this context. Spatial distributions of the 12CO and 13CO emission show significant differences. 12CO traces the large-scale molecular gas reservoir, associated with a dust lane that harbors infalling gas. 13CO emission is - for the first time - detected in the large-scale dust lane. Its emission peaks between dust lane and circumnuclear molecular ring. A 12CO-to-13CO1-0 intensity ratio map shows high values in the ring region (~30) typical for the centers of luminous galaxy mergers and even more extreme values in the dust lane (>45). This drop in ratio is consistent with molecular gas in the dust lane being in a diffuse, unbound state while being funneled towards the nucleus. We find a high 16O-to-18O abundance ratio in the starburst region (>900), typical of quiescent disk gas - by now, the starburst is expected to have enriched the nuclear ISM in 18O relative to 16O. The massive inflow of gas may be partially responsible for the low 18O/16O abundance since it will dilute the starburst enrichment with unprocessed gas from greater radii. The 12CO-to-13CO abundance is consistent with this scenario. It suggests that the nucleus of NGC1614 is in a transient phase of evolution where starburst and nuclear growth are fuelled by returning gas from the minor merger event., 10 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&A