A Herschel view of the far-infrared properties of submillimetre galaxies

By B. Magnelli, D. Lutz, P. Santini, A. Saintonge, S. Berta, M. Albrecht, B. Altieri, P. Andreani, H. Aussel, F. Bertoldi and 41 more. 2012

225 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study a sample of 61submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) selected from ground-based surveys, with known spectroscopic redshifts and observed with the Herschel Space Observatory as part of the PACS Evolutionary Probe (PEP) and the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) guaranteed time key programmes. Our study makes use of the broad far-infrared and submillimetre wavelength coverage (100−600  μm) only made possible by the combination of observations from the PACS and SPIRE instruments aboard the Herschel Space Observatory. Using a power-law temperature distribution model to derive infrared luminosities and dust temperatures, we measure a dust emissivity spectral index for SMGs of β = 2.0 ± 0.2. Our results unambiguously unveil the diversity of the SMG population. Some SMGs exhibit extreme infrared luminosities of ~10^(13) L_⊙ and relatively warm dust components, while others are fainter (a few times 10^(12) L_⊙) and are biased towards cold dust temperatures. Although at z~2 classical SMGs (>5 mJy at 850 μm) have large infrared luminosities (~10^(13) L_⊙ ), objects only selected on their submm flux densities (without any redshift informations) probe a large range in dust temperatures and infrared luminosities. The extreme infrared luminosities of some SMGs (L_IR ≳ 10^(12.7) L_⊙, 26/61 systems) imply star formation rates (SFRs) of >500 M_⊙ yr^(-1) (assuming a Chabrier IMF and no dominant AGN contribution to the FIR luminosity). Such high SFRs are difficult to reconcile with a secular mode of star formation, and may instead correspond to a merger-driven stage in the evolution of these galaxies. Another observational argument in favour of this scenario is the presence of dust temperatures warmer than that of SMGs of lower luminosities (~40 K as opposed to ~25 K), consistent with observations of local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies triggered by major mergers and with results from hydrodynamic simulations of major mergers combined with radiative transfer calculations. Moreover, we find that luminous SMGs are systematically offset from normal star-forming galaxies in the stellar mass-SFR plane, suggesting that they are undergoing starburst events with short duty cycles, compatible with the major merger scenario. On the other hand, a significant fraction of the low infrared luminosity SMGs have cold dust temperatures, are located close to the main sequence of star formation, and therefore might be evolving through a secular mode of star formation. However, the properties of this latter population, especially their dust temperature, should be treated with caution because at these luminosities SMGs are not a representative sample of the entire star-forming galaxy population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. D. M. Alexander
4. D. Narayanan
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Citations in the corpus

• AN ALMA SURVEY OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES IN THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: PHYSICAL PROPERTIES DERIVED FROM ULTRAVIOLET-TO-RADIO MODELING (2015, background): “As previous other SMG studies (e.g., Chapman et al. 2005; Kovács et al. 2006; Wardlow et al. 2010; Magnelli et al. 2012; Symeonidis et al. 2013; Casey et al. 2014; Swinbank et al. 2014), we find a correlation between the total dust luminosity and the average temperature of our sources (plotted…”
• The evolution of the dust temperatures of galaxies in the SFR–M∗ plane up to z ~ 2 (2013, methodology): “…mainly constituted by well virialized GMCs, while off-MS galaxies have low CO-to-H2 conversion factors, consistent with star-forming regions being constituted by unvirialized GMCs, as observed in local major mergers (Magnelli et al. 2012b; Genzel et al. 2010; Daddi et al. 2010; Magdis et al. 2012).”
• The deepest Herschel-PACS far-infrared survey: number counts and infrared luminosity functions from combined PEP/GOODS-H observations (2013, background): “…luminosity functions of galaxies (e.g., Gruppioni et al. 2010, 2013; Casey et al. 2012) and the examination of their spectral energy distributions (e.g., Hwang et al. 2010; Elbaz et al. 2010, 2011; Nordon et al. 2010, 2012; Magnelli et al. 2010, 2012; Symeonidis et al. 2013; Berta et al. 2013).”
• An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field: physical properties of 707 sub-millimetre galaxies (2019, methodology): “…rates significantly above the median trend of the field population have been argued to be a signature of starburst activity, potentially resulting from galaxy–galaxy mergers and interactions, which enhance the starformation rates of galaxies and so increase their sSFR (Magnelli et al. 2012).”
• Submillimetre galaxies in a hierarchical universe: number counts, redshift distribution, and implications for the IMF (2012, background): “…Space Exploration Technologies, 1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne, CA 90250, USA. and star formation rates (SFRs) of the order of ∼102–103 M yr−1 (e.g. Kovács et al. 2006; Coppin et al. 2008; Chapman et al. 2010; Magnelli et al. 2010, 2012; Michałowski, Hjorth & Watson 2010; Michałowski et al. 2012).”
• GOODS-ALMA: 1.1 mm galaxy survey (2018, background): “…Simpson et al. 2014), gas-rich (fgas > 50%; e.g. Daddi et al. 2010), with huge star formation rates (SFR) - often greater than 100 M year−1 (e.g. Magnelli et al. 2012; Swinbank et al. 2014) - making them significant contributors to the cosmic star formation (e.g. Casey et al. 2013), often…”
• THE SCUBA-2 COSMOLOGY LEGACY SURVEY: ALMA RESOLVES THE REST-FRAME FAR-INFRARED EMISSION OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES (2014, methodology): “We adopt a dust–to–gas ratio of fdg = 1/90 (Magnelli et al. 2012; Swinbank et al. 2014), but note that fdg = 1/50 has also been suggested for star-forming galaxies (Kovács et al. 2006).”
• VALIDATION OF THE EQUILIBRIUM MODEL FOR GALAXY EVOLUTION TO z ∼ 3 THROUGH MOLECULAR GAS AND DUST OBSERVATIONS OF LENSED STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “All the assumptions required to apply equation 7 to high redshift galaxies are extensively described in §5.1 of Magnelli et al. (2012b).”
• 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).”
• AN ALMA SURVEY OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES IN THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION AND EVOLUTION OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES (2013, background): “These templates span typical dust temperatures for SMGs (Magnelli et al. 2012; Weiß et al. 2013), and we find they are sufficient to describe the majority of ALESS SMGs. Previous studies have suggested redshift solutions below z <∼ 2.5 are incorrect for radio-non-detected SMGs (Smolčić et al.…”
• The stellar masses and specific star-formation rates of submillimetre galaxies (2011, methodology): “…of ∼ 1013 L⊙, estimated from a single 850µm detection (Greve et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2006), represents an overestimate, as revealed by recent Herschel studies (Magnelli et al. 2012; Roseboom et al. 2012, ∼ 1012.5−12.7 L⊙) making the SFR estimate of Daddi et al. (2007) a factor of 2–3 too high.”
• The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies (2013, methodology): “…leads to dust masses which are lower by a factor of ∼1.5 compared to those obtained with the more realistic assumption of a multi-temperature grain distribution (in agreement with previous studies, e.g., Santini et al. 2010; Magnelli et al. 2012a,b; Dale et al. 2012; Magdis et al. 2012).”
• PHIBSS: MOLECULAR GAS CONTENT AND SCALING RELATIONS IN z ∼ 1–3 MASSIVE, MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2012, background): “Most objects in this region appear to be dominated by short-lived starburst events with ~5-50 times smaller depletion time scales than in the main-sequence SFGs (Daddi et al. 2010b, Genzel et al. 2010, Magnelli et al. 2012a).”
• GOODS-HERSCHEL: STAR FORMATION, DUST ATTENUATION, AND THE FIR–RADIO CORRELATION ON THE MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES UP TO z ≃ 4 (2014, background): “Some recentHerschel-FIR based studies have claimed a redshift evolution of the correlation (e.g., Ivison et al. 2010; Magnelli et al. 2012; Casey et al. 2012, but see also e.g., Strazzullo et al. 2010; Bourne et al. 2011; Del Moro et al. 2013 for different conclusions), with increasing radio…”
• GRAVITATIONAL LENS MODELS BASED ON SUBMILLIMETER ARRAY IMAGING OF HERSCHEL-SELECTED STRONGLY LENSED SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES AT z > 1.5 (2013, methodology): “Besides the objects in this paper, this also includes SMGs from Hezaveh et al. (2013) (with photometry and redshifts coming from Weiß et al. 2013; Bothwell et al. 2013) and Magnelli et al. (2012).”
• PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, methodology): “19 CO 2-1, 3-2 or 4-3 detections of above main-sequence submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) between z=1.2 and 3.4, obtained with the IRAM PdBI by Greve et al. (2005), Tacconi et al. (2006, 2008) and Bothwell et al. (2013).”
• An ALMA survey of sub-millimetre Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: the far-infrared properties of SMGs (2013, methodology): “In the plot, we also include measurements for SMGs from Magnelli et al. (2012a) as well as the Herschel Star-forming Galaxies (HSGs) from Casey et al. (2012) (which have a median redshift of z ∼ 0.7), and the z=0–1 SPIRE-selected LIRGs and ULIRGs from Symeonidis et al. (2013) which appear to…”
• Panchromatic spectral energy distributions of Herschel sources (2013, background): “…2010) instruments aboardHerschel has guaranteed the detection not only of the most extreme star-forming galaxies, with star formation time scales on the order of∼ 0.1 Gyr or less (e.g. Magnelli et al. 2010, 2012; Rodighiero et al. 2011), but also objects lying o the MS of star formation up toz ∼ 2.”
• COMBINED CO AND DUST SCALING RELATIONS OF DEPLETION TIME AND MOLECULAR GAS FRACTIONS WITH COSMIC TIME, SPECIFIC STAR-FORMATION RATE, AND STELLAR MASS (2014, methodology): “Following Magdis et al. (2012b) and Magnelli et al. (2012a) we converted the Draine & Li (2007) model dust masses to (molecular) gas masses by applying the metallicity dependent dust to gas ratio fitting function for z~0 SFGs found by Leroy et al. (2011), ( 2 0.85 (12 log( / ) 8.67)) lg 10 (10),O…”