ALMA REDSHIFTS OF MILLIMETER-SELECTED GALAXIES FROM THE SPT SURVEY: THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION OF DUSTY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES

By A. Weiss, C. De Breuck, D. Marrone, J. Vieira, J. Aguirre, K. Aird, M. Aravena, M. Ashby, M. Bayliss, B. Benson and 58 more. 2013

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, we have conducted a blind redshift survey in the 3 mm atmospheric transmission window for 26 strongly lensed dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) selected with the South Pole Telescope. The sources were selected to have S1.4 mm  >  20 mJy and a dust-like spectrum and, to remove low-z sources, not have bright radio (S843 MHz  <  6 mJy) or far-infrared counterparts (S100 μm  <  1 Jy, S60 μm  <  200 mJy). We robustly detect 44 line features in our survey, which we identify as redshifted emission lines of 12CO, 13CO, C i, H2O, and H2O+. We find one or more spectral features in 23 sources yielding a ∼90% detection rate for this survey; in 12 of these sources we detect multiple lines, while in 11 sources we detect only a single line. For the sources with only one detected line, we break the redshift degeneracy with additional spectroscopic observations if available, or infer the most likely line identification based on photometric data. This yields secure redshifts for ∼70% of the sample. The three sources with no lines detected are tentatively placed in the redshift desert between 1.7  <  z  <  2.0. The resulting mean redshift of our sample is = 3.5. This finding is in contrast to the redshift distribution of radio-identified DSFGs, which have a significantly lower mean redshift of = 2.3 and for which only 10%–15% of the population is expected to be at z  >  3. We discuss the effect of gravitational lensing on the redshift distribution and compare our measured redshift distribution to that of models in the literature.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d47c63900c54624c52e0b2c62b9307b4488bebd2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. D. Narayanan
3. P. Hopkins
4. D. M. Alexander
5. C. Casey
6. R. Ivison
7. F. Walter
8. I. Smail

In Instrumentation

1. D. M. Alexander
2. C. Casey
3. D. Narayanan
4. I. Smail
5. R. Ivison
6. A. Cooray
7. L. Hernquist
8. S. Chapman

Citations in the corpus

• An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field: physical properties of 707 sub-millimetre galaxies (2019, background): “…luminosity-limited samples of obscured, starforming galaxies over a very wide range of cosmic time, spanning the expected peak activity in galaxy formation at z 1–3 (e.g. Chapman et al. 2005; Casey et al. 2012; Weiß et al. 2013; Simpson et al. 2014; Strandet et al. 2016; Brisbin et al. 2017).”
• AN ALMA SURVEY OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES IN THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION AND EVOLUTION OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “…of redshift; for example, from z = 1.5 (where there are no SPT sources) to z = 6 the probability of strong gravitational lensing (µ∼ 10) 16 Photometric redshift distribution of ALESS SMGs increases from P (z) = 0.6×10−4 to 3×10−4 (i.e. a factor of 5 increase; see Figure 6 from Weiß et al. 2013).”
• Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “The Weiß et al. (2013) work also includes an interesting discussion of size evolution and its potential impact on the observed redshift distribution.”
• An Extreme Protocluster of Luminous Dusty Starbursts in the Early Universe (2017, result): “…to determine a precise, unambiguous redshift via detection of several CO lines, similarly to the successful redshift determinations obtained by Weiß et al. (2009, 2013), Cox et al. (2011), Riechers et al. (2013), Asboth et al. (2016), Strandet et al. (2016), Oteo et al. (2016b), Fudamoto et…”
• The faint radio sky: radio astronomy becomes mainstream (2016, unknown): “Even if we had optical spectra for all the E-CDFS sources, though, 20 The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) can also determine redshifts of, for example, SFGs through their molecular emission lines at millimetre wavelengths (e.g., Weiß et al., 2013).”
• CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan (2019, background): “Most of these sources are gravitationally lensed by intervening galaxies; this magnification enables them to be studied in detail with ALMA [439, 440], providing fast redshift determinations and increased effective spatial resolution.”
• 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).”
• THE SCUBA-2 COSMOLOGY LEGACY SURVEY: ALMA RESOLVES THE REST-FRAME FAR-INFRARED EMISSION OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES (2014, background): “…if they instead lie at z = 6, then the range of FWHM is < 1.1–1.7 kpc, and these sources would be smaller than all but one z < 4 SMG. Recently Weiß et al. (2013) discussed that evolution in the size of SMGs with redshift is a possible explanation for the discrepancy between the redshift…”