ALMA Observations of Warm Dense Gas in NGC 1614 — Breaking of Star Formation Law in the Central kpc

We present ALMA Cycle-0 observations of the CO (6-5) line emission and of the 435 μm dust continuum emission in the central kpc of NGC 1614, a local luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) at a distance of 67.8 Mpc (1" = 329 pc). The CO emission is well resolved by the ALMA beam (0."26×0."20) into a circum-nuclear ring, with an integrated flux of f_(CO (6-5)) = 898 (±153) Jy km s^(-1), which is 63(±12)% of the total CO (6-5) flux measured by Herschel. The molecular ring, located between 100 pc < r < 350 pc from the nucleus, looks clumpy and includes seven unresolved (or marginally resolved) knots with median velocity dispersion of ∼ 40 km s^(-1). These knots are associated with strong star formation regions with Σ_(SFR) ∼ 100 M_⊙ yr^(-1) kpc^(-2) and Σ_(Gas) ∼ 10^4 M_⊙ pc^(-2). The non-detections of the nucleus in both the CO (6-5) line emission and the 435 μm continuum rule out, with relatively high confidence, a Compton-thick AGN in NGC 1614. Comparisons with radio continuum emission show a strong deviation from an expected local correlation between Σ_(Gas) and Σ_(SFR), indicating a breakdown of the Kennicutt-Schmidt law on the linear scale of ∼100 pc.