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We present deep CO observations of NGC6240 performed with the IRAM Plateau deBure Interferometer (PdBI). NGC6240 is the prototypical example of a majorgalaxy merger in progress, caught at an early stage, with an extended,strongly-disturbed butterfly-like morphology and the presence of a heavilyobscured active nucleus in the core of each progenitor galaxy. The CO lineshows a skewed profile with very broad and asymmetric wings detected out tovelocities of -600 km/s and +800 km/s with respect to the systemic velocity.The PdBI maps reveal the existence of two prominent structures of blueshiftedCO emission. One extends eastward, i.e. approximately perpendicular to the lineconnecting the galactic nuclei, over scales of ~7 kpc and shows velocities upto -400 km/s. The other extends southwestward out to ~7 kpc from the nuclearregion, and has a velocity of -100 km/s with respect to the systemic one.Interestingly, redshifted emission with velocities 400 to 800 km/s is detectedaround the two nuclei, extending in the east-west direction, and partlyoverlapping with the eastern blue-shifted structure, although tracing a morecompact region of size ~1.7 kpc. The overlap between the southwestern CO bloband the dust lanes seen in HST images, which are interpreted as tidal tails,indicates that the molecular gas is deeply affected by galaxy interactions. Theeastern blueshifted CO emission is co-spatial with an Halpha filament that isassociated with strong H2 and soft X-ray emission. The analysis of ChandraX-ray data provides strong evidence for shocked gas at the position of theHalpha emission. Its association with outflowing molecular gas supports ascenario where the molecular gas is compressed into a shock wave thatpropagates eastward from the nuclei. If this is an outflow, the AGN are likelythe driving force.

NGC6240: extended CO structures and their association with shocked gas