The SCUBA 8-mJy survey - I. Submillimetre maps, sources and number counts

By S. Scott, M. Fox, J. Dunlop, S. Serjeant, J. Peacock, R. Ivison, S. Oliver, R. Mann, A. Lawrence, A. Efstathiou and 13 more. 2001

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present maps, source lists and derived number counts from the largest, unbiased, extragalactic submillimetre (submm) survey so far undertaken with the SCUBA camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). Our maps are located in two regions of sky (ELAIS N2 and Lockman-Hole E) and cover 260arcmin2 , to a typical rms noise level of sigma 850 ~=2.5mJybeam-1 . We have reduced the data using both the standard JCMT surf procedures, and our own IDL -based pipeline which produces zero-footprint maps and noise images. The uncorrelated noise maps produced by the latter approach have enabled us to apply a maximum likelihood method to measure the statistical significance of each peak in our maps, leading to properly quantified errors on the flux density of all potential sources. We detect 19 sources with signal-to-noise ratios (S/N)>4, and 38 with S/N>3.5. To assess both the completeness of this survey and the impact of source confusion as a function of flux density, we have applied our source-extraction algorithm to a series of simulated images. The result is a new estimate of the submm source counts over the flux-density range S 850 ~=5-15mJy, which we compare with estimates derived by other workers, and with the predictions of a number of models. Our best estimate of the cumulative source count at S 850 >8mJy is per square degree. Assuming that the majority of sources lie at z >1.5, this result implies that the comoving number density of high-redshift galaxies forming stars at a rate in excess of 1000Msolar yr-1 is ~=10-5 Mpc-3 , with only a weak dependence on the precise redshift distribution. This number density corresponds to the number density of massive ellipticals with L >3-4L * in the present-day Universe , and is also the same as the comoving number density of comparably massive, passively evolving objects in the redshift band 1<z <2 inferred from recent surveys of extremely red objects. Thus the bright submm sources uncovered by this survey can plausibly account for the formation of all present-day massive ellipticals. Improved redshift constraints, and ultimately an improved measure of submm source clustering can refine or refute this picture.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b7f971e404970b267ec55cc8e620f0eb133d92ec

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. Hopkins
4. D. Narayanan
5. E. Daddi
6. R. Somerville
7. F. Walter
8. C. Casey

In Instrumentation

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. D. Narayanan
5. E. Daddi
6. A. Renzini
7. Mark Dickinson
8. R. Dav'e

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. R. Ivison
2. D. M. Alexander
3. I. Smail
4. S. Chapman
5. C. Carilli
6. A. Blain
7. L. Hernquist
8. F. Walter

Citations in the corpus

• A Redshift Survey of the Submillimeter Galaxy Population (2004, methodology): “The radio data for the Lockman Hole and ELAIS-N2 fields come from Ivison et al. (2002) who identified counterparts to the submm galaxies in these regions from Scott et al. (2002).”
• WHAT DOES A SUBMILLIMETER GALAXY SELECTION ACTUALLY SELECT? THE DEPENDENCE OF SUBMILLIMETER FLUX DENSITY ON STAR FORMATION RATE AND DUST MASS (2010, background): “…more frequently, implicitly) to infer SFR from observed submm flux densities (e.g., Chapman et al. 2000; Peacock et al. 2000; Blain et al. 2002; Scott et al. 2002; Webb et al. 2003; van Kampen et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2008; Wang et al. 2011), typically because the data sets do not have…”
• EXTRAGALACTIC MILLIMETER-WAVE SOURCES IN SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY DATA: SOURCE COUNTS, CATALOG, AND STATISTICS FOR AN 87 SQUARE-DEGREE FIELD (2009, background): “…of SMGs have now been detected by ground-based telescopes in surveys of blank fields, but only over a total area on the order of a square degree (Scott et al. 2002; Borys et al. 2003; Greve et al. 2004; Laurent et al. 2005; Coppin et al. 2006; Bertoldi et al. 2007; Perera et al. 2008; Scott et…”
• Modelling infrared galaxy evolution using a phenomenological approach (2002, background): “In the submillimetre, the main indication comes from the SCUBA deep surveys (e.g. Hughes et al. 1998; Barger et al. 1999; Eales et al. 1999; Scott et al. 2002).”
• A 1200-μm MAMBO survey of ELAIS N2 and the Lockman Hole - I. Maps, sources and number counts (2004, methodology): “With our dataset, in conjunction with the 8 mJy Survey images, we can reproduce the Eales et al. experiment in the case where only MAMBO positions are available.”
• GMASS ultradeep spectroscopy of galaxies at $z$ ~ 2 - II. Superdense passive galaxies: how did they form and evolve? (2008, background): “The similarity between the properties of the two populations is striking, with the notable exception of the comoving number density, with SMGs being an order of magnitude rarer (comoving number density≈ 10−5 Mpc−3; Scott et al. 2002, Chapman et al. 2005) than the passive descendants (≈ 10−4 Mpc−3; D”
• SWIRE: The SIRTF Wide‐Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (2001, background): “Intriguingly, there is tentative evidence to suggest that high-z sub-mm sources may be clustered (Scott et al. 2002; Almaini et al. 2003), as might be expected if these events are tracing the highest density environments at these redshifts.”
• The Infrared Luminosity Function of Galaxies at Redshifts z = 1 and z ~ 2 in the GOODS Fields (2007, background): “Until the launch of Spitzer, our vision of the high-redshift IR Universe was biased to the relatively small number of galaxies detected in submillimetre and millimetre surveys (e.g. Scott et al. 2002; Webb et al. 2003; Greve et al. 2005).”
• Tracing the molecular gas in distant submillimetre galaxies via CO(1-0) imaging with the EVLA (2010, methodology): “…at z = 2.2–2.5, two each in the Great Observatories Origins Surveys (GOODS) North and European Large Area Infrared Survey (ELAIS) N2 submm survey fields (Scott et al. 2002; Borys et al. 2003), pinpointed accurately via arcsec-resolution radio continuum imaging2 (Ivison et al. 1 NRAO is operated…”
• Interferometric Observations of Powerful CO Emission from Three Submillimeter Galaxies at z = 2.39, 2.51, and 3.35 (2003, background): “…this background is dominated by luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs/ULIRGs: LIR ∼ 1011.5 to 1013.5 L ) at z & 1 (e.g. Smail, Ivison & Blain 1997; Aussel et al. 2000; Genzel & Cesarsky 2000; Bertoldi et al. 2002; Elbaz et al. 2002; Scott et al. 2002; Cowie, Barger & Kneib 2002).”
• MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES: EXTENDED STAR FORMATION IN MASSIVE HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2009, background): “…of high-redshift galaxies identified through their submillimeter (submm) emission (Smail et al. 1997; Barger, Cowie & Sanders 1999; Eales et al. 1999; Bertoldi et al. 2000; Cowie et al. 2002; Scott et al. 2002; Borys et al. 2003; Webb et al. 2003; Coppin et al. 2005; Younger et al. 2007).”
• Scuba-2: Iterative map-making with the sub-millimetre user reduction facility (2013, methodology): “We direct the interested reader to a selection of papers on the subject: Scott et al. (2002); Coppin et al. (2006); Perera et al. (2008); Weiß et al. (2009) and Chapin et al. (2011).”
• UltraVISTA: a new ultra-deep near-infrared survey in COSMOS (2012, background): “…surveys for revealing dust-obscured star-forming galaxies was further enhanced by the discovery of significant numbers of Article published by EDP Sciences A156, page 1 of 11 dusty-enshrouded high-redshift star-forming galaxies at sub-mm wavelengths (Hughes et al. 1998; Scott et al. 2002).”
• The Hubble Deep Field North SCUBA Super-map—I. Submillimetre maps, sources and number counts (2003, methodology): “This approach is slightly different from that of Webb et al. (2003) and Scott et al. (2002), the only other two surveys to attempt a clustering analysis of SCUBA sources.”