The Interstellar Medium In Galaxies Seen A Billion Years After The Big Bang

By P. Capak, C. Carilli, G. Jones, C. Casey, D. Riechers, K. Sheth, C. Carollo, O. Ilbert, A. Karim, O. LeFèvre and 4 more. 2015

272 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Evolution in the measured rest frame ultraviolet spectral slope and ultraviolet to optical flux ratios indicate a rapid evolution in the dust obscuration of galaxies during the first 3 billion years of cosmic time (z>4). This evolution implies a change in the average interstellar medium properties, but the measurements are systematically uncertain due to untested assumptions, and the inability to measure heavily obscured regions of the galaxies. Previous attempts to directly measure the interstellar medium in normal galaxies at these redshifts have failed for a number of reasons with one notable exception. Here we report measurements of the [CII] gas and dust emission in 9 typical (~1-4L*) star-forming galaxies ~1 billon years after the big bang (z~5-6). We find these galaxies have >12x less thermal emission compared with similar systems ~2 billion years later, and enhanced [CII] emission relative to the far-infrared continuum, confirming a strong evolution in the interstellar medium properties in the early universe. The gas is distributed over scales of 1-8 kpc, and shows diverse dynamics within the sample. These results are consistent with early galaxies having significantly less dust than typical galaxies seen at z<3 and being comparable to local low-metallicity systems.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e66d50a6a4687a0b7dce1ffe527130de0e52b0a

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Citations in the corpus

A Redshift-independent Efficiency Model: Star Formation and Stellar Masses in Dark Matter Halos at z ≳ 4 (2018, background): “There is currently much debate in literature on whether or not the UV-to-IR ratio (IRX) versus β relationship still holds at high redshift galaxies (e.g. Capak et al. 2015; McLure et al. 2018; Koprowski et al. 2018; Reddy et al. 2018; Narayanan et al. 2018).”
The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey (2020, methodology): “We assume 235 km s−1 FWHM line width (or sigma ∼100 km s−1), which is the average width measured in the Capak et al. (2015) sample.”
Big Three Dragons: A z = 7.15 Lyman-break galaxy detected in [O iii] 88 μm, [C ii] 158 μm, and dust continuum with ALMA (2018, methodology): “With the advent of the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, it has become possible to detect rest-frame far-infrared (FIR) fine structure lines in star-forming galaxies at z > 5 (e.g., Capak et al. 2015; Maiolino et al. 2015).”
ALMA SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD: THE INFRARED EXCESS OF UV-SELECTED z = 2–10 GALAXIES AS A FUNCTION OF UV-CONTINUUM SLOPE AND STELLAR MASS (2016, methodology): “Previously, Capak et al. (2015) had also considered the impact of new ALMA results for the implied star-formation rate densities at z ∼ 4-7, finding suggestive evidence for smaller dust corrections than had previously been utilized.”
Inferring the astrophysics of reionization and cosmic dawn from galaxy luminosity functions and the 21-cm signal (2018, background): “In the above, we ignore dust extinction for the faint galaxies and high redshifts of interest (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2012; Capak et al. 2015), and assume a Salpeter IMF.”
A deep ALMA image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2016, background): “…focused (sensibly) on pointed observations of known objects (e.g. Hodge et al. 2013; Karim et al. 2013; Ouchi et al. 2013; Bussmann et al. 2015; Capak et al. 2015; Maiolino et al. 2015; Simpson et al. 2015a, 2015b; Scoville et al. 2016), including gravitationally lensed sources (e.g. Weiss et…”
The HDUV Survey: A Revised Assessment of the Relationship between UV Slope and Dust Attenuation for High-redshift Galaxies (2017, background): “Capak et al. (2015) report on ALMA constraints on the IRX of a small sample of 10 z ∼ 5.5 LBGs and find that they generally fall below the SMC extinction curve.”
The Universe Is Reionizing at z ∼ 7: Bayesian Inference of the IGM Neutral Fraction Using Lyα Emission from Galaxies (2017, background): “…contain less dust (as ALMA and Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI) re- sults are suggesting, Walter et al. 2012; Ouchi et al. 2013; Ota et al. 2014; Schaerer et al. 2015; Maiolino et al. 2015; Capak et al. 2015; Bouwens et al. 2016b; Pentericci et al. 2016) and neutral gas than at low redshifts.”
An ALMA [C ii] Survey of 27 Quasars at z > 5.94 (2018, background): “On the other hand, Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) and Lyα emitters (LAEs) at >z 5 (Riechers et al. 2014; Capak et al. 2015; Maiolino et al. 2015; Pentericci et al. 2016) show significantly narrow [C II] lines, with a mean and standard deviation of 200±100 -km s 1.”
The DEIMOS 10K Spectroscopic Survey Catalog of the COSMOS Field (2018, background): “…identify high-redshift Lyαemitters (Mallery et al. 2012) and high-redshift protoclusters in the COSMOS field (Capak et al. 2011), allowing a study of the metal properties of high-redshift galaxies (e.g., Faisst et al. 2016), as well as designing high-redshift ALMA surveys (e.g., Capak et al. 2015).”
RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (2019, background): “These telescopes (primarily ALMA) have detected high-redshift galaxies by their infrared continuum dust emission (Capak et al. 2015) as well as spectral lines [C ii] 158µm and [O iii] 88µm, which trace star formation (De Looze et al. 2014).”
The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, result): “We note that recent ALMA results have found consistency with the Meurer et al. (1999) law at z ∼ 3, while suggesting a possible evolution towards lower attenuations at z larger than 4 or 5 (Capak et al. 2015; Bouwens et al. 2016; Fudamoto et al. 2017).”