Mapping the Evolution of High-Redshift Dusty Galaxies with Submillimeter Observations of a Radio-selected Sample

By A. Barger, L. Cowie, E. Richards. 2000

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Direct submillimeter imaging has recently revealed the 850 μm background to be mostly composed of a population of distant ultraluminous infrared galaxies, but identifying the optical/near-infrared (NIR) counterparts to these sources has proved difficult because of the poor submillimeter spatial resolution. However, the proportionality of both centimeter and submillimeter data to the star formation rate suggests that high-resolution radio continuum maps with subarcsecond positional accuracy can be exploited to locate submillimeter sources. In this paper we present results from a targeted SCUBA survey of microjansky radio sources in the flanking fields of the Hubble Deep Field. The sources were selected from the uniform (8 μJy at 1 σ) 1.4 GHz VLA image of Richards. Even with relatively shallow SCUBA observations (a 3 σ detection limit of 6 mJy at 850 μm), we were successful at making submillimeter detections of optical/NIR-faint (I ≳ 24 and K ≃ 21–22) radio sources, and our counts closely match the bright counts from submillimeter surveys. An important corollary is that a large fraction of the bright (>6 mJy) submillimeter sources in untargeted submillimeter surveys have extremely faint optical/NIR counterparts and hence are inaccessible to optical imaging and spectroscopy. However, redshift estimates can be made from the ratio of the submillimeter flux to the radio flux across the 100 GHz break in the spectral energy distribution. This procedure, which we refer to as millimetric redshift estimation, places the bright submillimeter population at z = 1–3, where it forms the high-redshift tail of the faint radio population. The star formation rate density (SFRD) due to ultraluminous infrared galaxies increases by more than 2 orders of magnitude from z ∼ 0 to z ∼ 1–3. The SFRD at high-redshift inferred from our >6 mJy submillimeter observations is comparable with that observed in the ultraviolet/optical.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/005a34a0f6a29523f022906eb8b38ba3b8898f23

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. Hopkins
4. Mark Dickinson
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. R. Ivison
7. E. Daddi
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• The Infrared Luminosity Function of Galaxies at Redshifts z = 1 and z ~ 2 in the GOODS Fields (2007, background): “…refer to different bolometric IR luminosity density estimations derived from different datasets: radio (Haarsma et al. 2000; downward-pointing triangle), sub-millimetre (Barger et al. 2000; diamondlike symbol) and the different fits made on mid-IR data by Pérez-González et al. (2005; asterisks).”
• Evidence for Extended, Obscured Starbursts in Submillimeter Galaxies (2004, background): “Indeed, a large fraction of the bright submillimeter population at high redshifts are detected as microjansky radio sources (Smail et al. 2000; Barger et al. 2000; Chapman et al. 2001; Ivison et al. 2002), as expected given their submillimeter luminosities and the local far-IR–radio correlation…”
• THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “Notable examples are Lyman break galaxies (LBGs; Steidel et al. 2003), sub-mm galaxies (SMGs; e.g., Barger et al. 2000; Blain et al. 2002), Lyα emitters (LAEs; e.g., Fynbo et al. 2003b, 2005; Sawicki & Thompson 2006), distant red galaxies (DRGs; Daddi et al. 2004), damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs;…”
• Cosmic evolution of submillimeter galaxies and their contribution to stellar mass assembly (2009, unknown): “…0.209 0.0486 0.0054 0.0054 submm This work 3.101 0.522 0.0341 0.0040 0.0040 submm This work 2.000 1.000 0.1476 0.0607 0.0973 submm Barger et al. (2000); Hopkins (2004) 4.500 1.500 0.1901 0.1195 0.2454 submm Barger et al. (2000); Hopkins (2004) 0.057 0.041 0.0206 0.0016 0.0024 submm Pascale et…”
• The Canada-UK Deep Submillimeter Survey. IV. The Survey of the 14 Hour Field (2000, methodology): “Thus conclusions that the universe had a dark age in which 90% of the light is absorbed by dust (Hughes et al. 1998 ; Barger et al. 2000) are premature, but neither can one rule out this possibility.”
• Deep radio imaging of the SCUBA 8-mJy survey fields: submillimetre source identifications and redshift distribution (2002, methodology): “Barger et al. (2000) and Chapman et al. (2001b) discuss a technique designed to improve the detection rate of submm galaxies: pre-selection of optically faint radio sources (OFRS, S1.”
• THE COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND: Measurements and Implications ⁄ (2001, background): “…and follow-up studies of the redshift distribution of these sources show that a significant fraction of the star formation activity at high redshift is taking place behind a veil of dust hidden from UV and optical observers (Hughes et al 1998; Barger et al 1998, 1999b, 2000; Lilly et al 1999).”
• Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, methodology): “The Chapman et al. sample of 73 galaxies was spectroscopically observed at Keck Observatory using the LRIS instrument (Oke et al., 1995) and has a median redshift of z = 2.2 (some of these redshifts had been reported in earlier works, e.g. Barger et al., 2000; Chapman et al., 2003b).”
• The Hubble Deep Field-North SCUBA Super-map - IV. Characterizing submillimetre galaxies using deep Spitzer imaging (2006, result): “This is consistent with previous studies, telling us that submm galaxies are significant contributors to the global star formation at high redshift (e.g. Hughes et al. 1998; Lilly et al. 1999; Barger et al. 2000).”
• DUSTY INFRARED GALAXIES: Sources of the Cosmic Infrared Background (2005, background): “Barger et al. (2000) have observed optically faint radio sources at submillimeter wavelength and demonstrated them to be, so far, the most efficient way to preselect targets for submillimeter observations and to get larger samples of potentially high redshift SMGs.”
• A Spectroscopic Survey of Redshift 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 3.0 Galaxies in the GOODS-North Field: Survey Description, Catalogs, and Properties (2006, background): “Of these, 52 were previously published in other surveys of the GOODS field (Cowie et al. 2004; Cohen et al. 1996, 2000; Cohen 2001; Barger et al. 2000, 2003; Wirth et al. 2004; Phillips et al. 1997; Lowenthal et al. 1997; Dawson et al. 2001; Steidel et al. 1996, 2003; Dickinson 1998) and/or have…”
• Characterization of Scuba-2 450 μm and 850 μm selected galaxies in the COSMOS field (2013, methodology): “…from the well-known FIR/radio correlation for starburst galaxies (Helou et al. 1985; Condon 1992), whereby a radiodetected galaxy is likely to be FIR-bright, and thus correspond to the source generating the FIR emission detected in our Scuba-2 maps (Barger et al. 2000; Chapman et al. 2003, 2005).”
• Spitzer Observations of Massive, Red Galaxies at High Redshift (2005, unknown): “Surveys with SCUBA have identified a population of submillimeter galaxies at zk 2 that emit the bulk of their bolometric luminosity at IR wavelengths (see Blain et al. 2002) andmay contribute substantially to the cosmic SFR (Barger et al. 2000).”