Models for molecular transitions

However, line intensities, as well as, more importantly, line ratios, from different chemical models can be very similar leading to a clear degeneracy. We also find that the gas subjected to a galactic cosmic ray ionization rate will not necessarily have reached steady state by 1 million years. The species most affected by time dependency effects are HCN and CS, both high density tracers.

We use our ab initio method to fit an example set of data from two galaxies (M82 and, NGC 253). We find that (i) molecular line ratios can be easily matched even with erroneous individual line intensities; (ii) no set of species can be matched by a one-component ISM; (iii) a species may be a good tracer of an energetic process but only under specific density and temperature conditions. We provide tables of chemical abundances and line intensities ratios for some of the most commonly observed extragalactic tracers of dense gas for a grid of models.

We show that by taking into consideration the chemistry behind each species and the individual line intensities, many degeneracies that arise by just using molecular line ratios can be avoided. Finally we show that using a species or a ratio as a tracer of an individual energetic process (e.g. cosmic rays, UV) ought to be done with caution.