An interferometric CO survey of luminous submillimetre galaxies

By T. Greve, F. Bertoldi, I. Smail, R. Chapman, A. Blain, R. Ivison, R. Genzel, A. Omont, P. Cox, L. Tacconi and 17 more. 2005

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In this paper, we present results from an Institut de Radio Astronomie Millimetrique (IRAM) Plateau de Bure millimetre-wave Interferometer (PdBI) survey for carbon monoxide (CO) emission towards radio-detected submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) with known optical and near-infrared spectroscopic redshifts. Five sources in the redshift range z ∼ 1-3.5 were detected, nearly doubling the number of SMGs detected in CO. We summarize the properties of all 12 CO-detected SMGs, as well as six sources not detected in CO by our survey, and use this sample to explore the bulk physical properties of the submillimetre galaxy (SMG) population as a whole. The median CO line luminosity of the SMGs is = (3.8 ± 2.0) × 10 10 K km s -1 pc 2 . Using a CO-to-H 2 conversion factor appropriate for starburst galaxies, this corresponds to a molecular gas mass = (3.0 ± 1.6) x 10 10 M ○. within an ∼ 2 kpc radius, approximately 4 times greater than the most luminous local ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) but comparable to that of the most extreme high-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) and quasi-sellar objects (QSOs). The median CO FWHM linewidth is broad, (FWHM) = 780 ± 320 km s -1 , and the SMGs often have double-peaked line profiles, indicative of either a merger or a disc. From their median gas reservoirs (∼ 3 x 10 10 M ○. ) and star formation rates (≥ 700 M ○. yr -1 ), we estimate a lower limit on the typical gas-depletion time-scale of ≥ 40 Myr in SMGs. This is marginally below the typical age expected for the starbursts in SMGs and suggests that negative feedback processes may play an important role in prolonging the gas consumption time-scale. We find a statistically significant correlation between the far-infrared and CO luminosities of the SMGs, which extends the observed correlation for local ULIRGs to higher luminosities and higher redshifts. The non-linear nature of the correlation implies that SMGs have higher far-infrared to CO luminosity ratios and possibly higher star formation efficiencies (SFEs), than local ULIRGs. Assuming a typical CO source diameter of θ ∼ 0.5 arcsec (D ∼ 4kpc), we estimate a median dynamical mass of ≃ (1.2 ± 1.5) x 10 11 M ○. for the SMG sample. Both the total gas and stellar masses imply that SMGs are very massive systems, dominated by baryons in their central regions. The baryonic and dynamical properties of these systems mirror those of local giant ellipticals and are consistent with numerical simulations of the formation of the most massive galaxies. We have been able to impose a lower limit of ≥ 5 x 10 -6 Mpc -3 to the comoving number density of massive galaxies in the redshift range z ∼ 2-3.5, which is in agreement with results from recent spectroscopic surveys and the most recent model predictions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

COSBO: The MAMBO 1.2 Millimeter Imaging Survey of the COSMOS Field (2007, background): “%) of all baryons that reside in massive halos assembled into galaxies very early on (Greve et al. 2005).”
Tracing the molecular gas in distant submillimetre galaxies via CO(1-0) imaging with the EVLA (2010, methodology): “L′CO, was first shown by the 12CO J = 3–2 and 4–3 survey of SMGs by Greve et al. (2005).”
EVIDENCE FOR A CLUMPY, ROTATING GAS DISK IN A SUBMILLIMETER GALAXY AT z = 4 (2012, background): “Their rarity may be partly because their enhanced SFRs are necessarily short–lived (< 100 Myr; Greve et al. 2005), or else the galaxies would grow too large, too fast. hodge@mpia.de 1 Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany 2 National Radio Astronomy Observatory”
Resolved Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Star Formation in Disks at High Redshift (2007, result): “Star formation rates estimated previously (EERS05) and in other studies (e.g., Daddi et al. 2004a, 2004b; Greve et al. 2005) suggest that galaxies with intermediate to high masses end their star formation relatively quickly, in 2 Gyr or less (e.g., Feulner et al. 2005).”
Mid-Infrared Spectral Diagnosis of Submillimeter Galaxies (2007, background): “Interestingly, C1 has not been detected in CO (Greve et al. 2005).”
Cosmic evolution of the atomic and molecular gas contents of galaxies (2011, background): “…H2 absorption in the lines-of-sight to QSOs have been reported (e.g. Noterdaeme et al. 2008; Tumlinson et al. 2010; Srianand et al. 2010), as well asCO detections in a large number of luminous star-forming galaxies (e.g. Greve et al. 2005; Geach et al. 2009; Daddi et al. 2010; Tacconi et al. 2010).”
Multiwavelength Study of Massive Galaxies at z ~ 2. II. Widespread Compton-thick Active Galactic Nuclei and the Concurrent Growth of Black Holes and Bulges (2007, background): “The long duty cycle of their SFR activity (Daddi et al 2005b; Paper I) also supports this idea, while SMGs are thought to be comparably much shorted lived (e.g., Greve et al 2005 but see also Swinbank et al. 2006).”
SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES AS PROGENITORS OF COMPACT QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2014, background): “…fraction of SMGs with measured CO profiles, show double peaked profiles, evident of ongoing major mergers or rotation (Frayer et al. 1999; Neri et al. 2003; Sheth et al. 2004; Kneib et al. 2005; Greve et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2006; Riechers et al. 2011b; Ivison et al. 2013; Fu et al. 2013).”
A general model for the CO–H2 conversion factor in galaxies with applications to the star formation law (2011, methodology): “The high-z SMGs are divided into the samples of Bothwell et al. (2010) (purple), Bouché et al. (2007) (green) and Greve et al. (2005), Tacconi et al. (2006; 2008), Engel et al. (2010) as compiled by Genzel et al. (2010) (filled red squares).”
Vigorous Star Formation with Low Efficiency in Massive Disk Galaxies at z = 1.5 (2007, methodology): “We adapted published luminosities for local (Solomon et al. 1997; Yao et al 2003) and distant sources (Greve et al. 2005) to WMAP cosmological parameters (Spergel et al. 2007).”
350 μm Dust Emission from High-Redshift Quasars (2006, background): “At high redshifts, a large fraction of the star formation occurs in very luminous (>1012 L ) galaxies (Greve et al. 2005).”
MOLECULAR GAS IN z ∼ 6 QUASAR HOST GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “The probabilities that the data are drawn from the same parent population are 19% for the z∼6 and 1.4 ≤ z ≤ 5 quasar samples, and 16% for the z∼6 quasar and SMG samples.”
Evolution of the dust emission of massive galaxies up to z=4 and constraints on their dominant mode of star formation (2014, background): “…galaxies (SMGs) revealed that their very intense SFR (∼1000 M /yr) is also driven by a SFE boosted by a factor of 10 with respect to normal star-forming galaxies in the local Universe (e.g., Greve et al. 2005; Frayer et al. 2008; Daddi et al. 2009a,b), likely induced by a major merger.”
The Link between Submillimetre Galaxies and Luminous Ellipticals: Near-Infrared IFU Spectroscopy of Submillimetre Galaxies (2006, methodology): “…which show multi-components in their spatially resolved spectra, either from IFU spectroscopy c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 (this work; Swinbank et al. 2005; Tecza et al. 2004); resolved CO spectroscopy (Greve et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2006); or longslit observations (Swinbank et al. 2004).”
SHARC-2 350 μm Observations of Distant Submillimeter-selected Galaxies (2006, background): “In comparison to the gas masses derived from7 CO measurements (Greve et al. 2005; Tacconi et al. 2006), we find an average gas-to-dust ratio of 54þ14 11 850 m/0:15 m 2 kg 1 , resembling the ratios seen in nuclear regions of local galaxies by Seaquist et al. (2004), who assume a dXCO product…”
The LABOCA survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: A photometric redshift survey of submillimetre galaxies (2010, background): “As we have shown, the estimated baryonic masses of these galaxies are ∼1.2 × 1011 M , combining our best estimate of the stellar mass with the typical gas masses from Greve et al. (2005).”
On the Accretion Origin of a Vast Extended Stellar Disk around the Andromeda Galaxy (2005, result): “Such a rapid formation of the disk in this way is similar to what is deduced for ∼ 1mJy submm sources at z ∼ 2 with star-formation rates of ∼ 100M⊙/yr (Chapman et al. 2003; Greve et al. 2005).”