We investigated the interplay between dense molecular gas, star formation, and active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback in the luminous IR galaxy NGC 1068 at sub-kiloparsec scales. We present the HCN (4-3) and HCO+ (4-3) maps of NGC 1068 obtained with JCMT as part of the Mapping the dense molecular gas in the strongest star-forming galaxies (MALATANG) project, and perform spatially resolved analyses of their correlations with IR luminosity and soft X-ray emission. The spatially resolved relations between the luminosities of IR dust emission and dense molecular gas tracers (LIR-L'dense) are found to be nearly linear, without clear evidence of excess contributions from AGN activity. The spatially resolved X-ray emission (L^gas^0.5-2KeV) displays a radially dependent twofold correlation with the star formation rate (SFR), suggesting distinct gas-heating mechanisms are at play in areas between the galaxy center and the outer regions. A super-linear scaling is obtained in galactic center regions with SFR surface densities ({SIGMA}SFR)>8.2x10^-6^M_{sun}/yr/kpc^2^:log(L^gas^0.5-2KeV/erg/s) = 2.2log(SFR/M_{sun}/yr)+39.1. We further find a statistically significant super-linear correlation (beta=1.34+/-0.86) between L^gas^0.5-2KeV/SFR and the HCN(4-3)/CO(1-0) intensity ratio, whereas no such trend is seen for HCO+(4-3)/CO(1-0) or CO(3-2)/CO(1-0). These findings indicate that AGN feedback does not dominate star formation regulation on sub-kiloparsec scales, and that the excitation of dense gas traced by HCN (4-3) may be more directly influenced by high-energy feedback processes compared to HCO+ (4-3) and CO (3-2).

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/707/A20/tablea1 (*Velocity-integrated intensities and luminosities of NGC 1068 at sub kpc scale)