Mid-infrared diagnostics of starburst galaxies: Clumpy, dense structures in star-forming regions in the antennae (NGC 4038/4039)

Recently, mid-infrared instruments have become available on several large ground-based telescopes, resulting in data sets with unprecedented spatial resolution at these long wavelengths. In this paper we examine ``ground-based-only'' diagnostics, which can be used in the study of star-forming regions in starburst galaxies. By combining output from the stellar population synthesis code Starburst99 with the photoionization code Mappings, we model stellar clusters and their surrounding interstellar medium, focusing on the evolution of emission lines in the N- and Q- band atmospheric windows (8-13 and 16.5-24.5 mu m, respectively) and those in the near-infrared. We address the detailed sensitivity of various emission-line diagnostics to stellar population age, metallicity, nebular density, and ionization parameter. Using our model results, we analyze observations of two stellar clusters in the overlap region of the Antennae galaxies obtained with VLT Imager and Spectrometer for Mid-Infrared (VISIR). We find evidence for clumpy, high-density, ionized gas. The two clusters are young (younger than 2.5 and 3 Myr, respectively), the surrounding interstellar matter is dense (>= 10(4) cm(-3)) and can be characterized by a high ionization parameter (log U >=-1.53). Detailed analysis of the mid-infrared spectral features shows that a (near-) homogeneous medium cannot account for the observations, and that complex structure on scales below the resolution limit, containing several young stellar clusters embedded in clumpy gas, is more likely.