NOEMA Observations of CO Emission in Arp 142 and Arp 238

Previous studies have shown significant differences in the enhancement of the star formation rate (SFR) and star formation efficiency (SFE = SFR/M mol) between spiral–spiral and spiral–elliptical mergers. In order to shed light on the physical mechanism of these differences, we present NOEMA observations of the molecular gas distribution and kinematics (linear resolutions of ∼2 kpc) in two representative close major-merger star-forming pairs: the spiral–elliptical pair Arp 142 and the spiral–spiral pair Arp 238. The CO in Arp 142 is widely distributed over a highly distorted disk without any nuclear concentration, and an off-center ringlike structure is discovered in channel maps. The SFE varies significantly within Arp 142, with a starburst region (region 1) near the eastern tip of the distorted disk showing an SFE ∼ 0.3 dex above the mean of the control sample of isolated galaxies and the SFE of the main disk (region 4) 0.43 dex lower than the mean of the control sample. In contrast, the CO emission in Arp 238 is detected only in two compact sources at the galactic centers. Compared to the control sample, Arp 238-E shows an SFE enhancement of more than 1 dex, whereas Arp 238-W has an enhancement of ∼0.7 dex. We suggest that the extended CO distribution and large SFE variation in Arp 142 are due to an expanding large-scale ring triggered by a recent high-speed head-on collision between the spiral galaxy and the elliptical galaxy, and the compact CO sources with high SFEs in Arp 238 are associated with nuclear starbursts induced by gravitational tidal torques in a low-speed coplanar interaction.