Herschel SPIRE/FTS 194-671um survey of GOALS LIRGs

The CO spectral line energy distributions (SLEDs) presented here are consistent with our earlier work, which was based on a smaller sample, that calls for two distinct molecular gas components in general: (i) a cold component, which emits CO lines primarily at J<~4 and likely represents the same gas phase traced by CO (1-0), and (ii) a warm component, which dominates over the mid-J regime (4<J<~10) and is intimately related to current star formation.

We present evidence that the CO line emission associated with an active galactic nucleus is significant only at J>10. The flux ratios of the two [CI] lines imply modest excitation temperatures of 15-30K; the [CI] 370{mu}m line scales more linearly in flux with CO (4-3) than with CO (7-6). These findings suggest that the [CI] emission is predominantly associated with the gas component defined in (i) above.