Cosmic evolution of submillimeter galaxies and their contribution to stellar mass assembly

By M. Michałowski, J. Hjorth, D. Watson. 2009

202 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The nature of galaxies selected at submillimeter wavelengths (SMGs, S 850 ≳ 3 mJy), some of the bolometrically most luminous objects at high redshifts, is still elusive. In particular their star formation histories and source of emission are not accurately constrained. In this paper we introduce a new approach to analyse the SMG data. Namely, we present the first self-consistent UV-to-radio spectral energy distribution fits of 76 SMGs with spectroscopic redshifts using all photometric datapoints from ultraviolet to radio simultaneously. We find that they are highly star-forming (median star formation rate 713 M ⊙ yr -1 for SMGs at z > 0.5), moderately dust-obscured (median A v ~ 2 mag), hosting significant stellar populations (median stellar mass 3.7 10 11 M ⊙ ) of which only a minor part has been formed in the ongoing starburst episode. This implies that in the past, SMGs experienced either another starburst episode or merger with several galaxies. The properties of SMGs suggest that they are progenitors of present-day elliptical galaxies. We find that these bright SMGs contribute significantly to the cosmic star formation rate density (~20%) and stellar mass density (~30-50%) at redshifts 2-4. Using number counts at low fluxes we find that as much as 80% of the cosmic star formation at these redshifts took place in SMGs brighter than 0.1 mJy. We find evidence that a linear infrared-radio correlation holds for SMGs in an ' unchanged form up to redshift of 3.6, though its normalization is offset from the local relation by a factor of ~2.1 towards higher radio luminosities. We present a compilation of photometry data of SMGs and determinations of cosmic SFR and stellar mass densities.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/39e51f89ee01b7cf6fbeaeed1b6b57c6d1fb3770

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. D. Narayanan
4. D. M. Alexander
5. R. Dav'e
6. R. Somerville
7. Thomas J. Cox
8. C. Casey

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. Thomas J. Cox
4. R. Ivison
5. D. M. Alexander
6. I. Smail
7. D. Narayanan
8. S. Chapman

Citations in the corpus

• A physical model for z∼ 2 dust-obscured galaxies (2009, background): “DOGs and SMGs cluster in similar mass haloes (Brodwin et al. 2008), and tentative evidence suggests that they may contain somewhat similar mass stellar bulges (e.g. Swinbank et al. 2004; Borys et al. 2005; Bussmann et al. 2009a; Michałowski et al. 2010).”
• WHAT DOES A SUBMILLIMETER GALAXY SELECTION ACTUALLY SELECT? THE DEPENDENCE OF SUBMILLIMETER FLUX DENSITY ON STAR FORMATION RATE AND DUST MASS (2010, background): “Recently, some authors have used models incorporating a distribution of temperatures (e.g., Kovács et al. 2010; Michałowski et al. 2010a), finding that such models better described the IR SEDs (Kovács et al. 2010).”
• AN ALMA SURVEY OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES IN THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: PHYSICAL PROPERTIES DERIVED FROM ULTRAVIOLET-TO-RADIO MODELING (2015, background): “However, so far most studies have analyzed the (optical) stellar and the infrared (dust) SEDs of SMGs independently from each other (with the exception Michałowski et al. 2010, who used GRASIL Silva et al. 1998 templates to model the full SEDs of SMGs).”
• THE STELLAR MASS CONTENT OF SUBMILLIMETER-SELECTED GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “K-band light has been used to determine the stellar mass in past studies of the stellar mass of SMGs (e.g., Borys et al. 2005; Michałowski et al. 2010) because of its low sensitivity to previous star formation history and dust obscuration.”
• GOODS-ALMA: 1.1 mm galaxy survey (2018, background): “These SMGs are plausible progenitors of present-day massive early-type galaxies (e.g. Cimatti et al. 2008; Michałowski et al. 2010).”
• THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, result): “This in turn translates to a high star formation rate, on the order of 200-1000M⊙ yr−1, which is consistent with observations of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs; Magnelli et al. 2012; Michałowski et al. 2010a,b; Daddi et al. 2005; Chapman et al. 2004).”
• Submillimetre galaxies in a hierarchical universe: number counts, redshift distribution, and implications for the IMF (2012, background): “They have stellar masses of ∼1011 M , although recent estimates (Michałowski et al. 2010, 2012; Hainline et al. 2011) differ by a factor of ∼6, and typical gas fractions of ∼40 per cent (Greve et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2006, 2008; but cf. Narayanan, Bothwell & Davé 2012a).”
• A Herschel view of the far-infrared properties of submillimetre galaxies (2012, background): “The agreement between our findings is encouraging because CO observations and dynamic mass arguments (Engel et al. 2010) favour these lower stellar mass estimates, more consistent with the findings of Hainline et al. (2011) than those of Michałowski et al. (2010).”
• Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “At the same time, Michałowski et al. (2010) found a median stellar mass in the Hainline et al. (2011) sample of 76 SMGs of ⟨M∗⟩ ≈ 3.5 × 1011 M⊙.”