No Arabic abstract
The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is a region in the sky that provides one of the deepest multi-wavelength views of the distant universe and has led to the detection of thousands of galaxies seen throughout cosmic time. An early map of the HDF at a wavelength of 850 microns that is sensitive to dust emission powered by star formation revealed the brightest source in the field, dubbed HDF850.1. For more than a decade, this source remained elusive and, despite significant efforts, no counterpart at shorter wavelengths, and thus no redshift, size or mass, could be identified. Here we report, using a millimeter wave molecular line scan, an unambiguous redshift determination for HDF850.1 of z=5.183. This places HDF850.1 in a galaxy overdensity at z~5.2 in the HDF, corresponding to a cosmic age of only 1.1 Gyr after the Big Bang. This redshift is significantly higher than earlier estimates and higher than most of the >100 sub-millimeter bright galaxies identified to date. The source has a star formation rate of 850 M_sun/yr and is spatially resolved on scales of 5 kpc, with an implied dynamical mass of ~1.3x10^11 M_sun, a significant fraction of which is present in the form of molecular gas. Despite our accurate redshift and position, a counterpart arising from starlight remains elusive.
During our Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) of massive galaxy clusters, we have discovered an exceptionally bright source behind the z=0.22 cluster Abell 773, which appears to be a strongly lensed submillimeter galaxy (SMG) at z=5.2429. This source is unusual compared to most other lensed sources discovered by Herschel so far, because of its higher submm flux (sim 200mJy at 500micron) and its high redshift. The dominant lens is a foreground z=0.63 galaxy, not the cluster itself. The source has a far-infrared (FIR) luminosity of L_FIR= 1.1 10^{14}/mu Lo, where mu is the magnification factor, likely sim 11. We report here the redshift identification through CO lines with the IRAM-30m, and the analysis of the gas excitation, based on CO(7-6), CO(6-5), CO(5-4) detected at IRAM and the CO(2-1) at the EVLA. All lines decompose into a wide and strong red component, and a narrower and weaker blue component, 540kms apart. Assuming the ultraluminous galaxy (ULIRG) CO-to-H2 conversion ratio, the H2 mass is 5.8 10^{11}/mu Mo, of which one third is in a cool component. From the CI line we derive a CI/H2 number abundance of 6 10^{-5} similar to that in other ULIRGs. The H2O line is strong only in the red velocity component, with an intensity ratio I(H_2O)/I(CO) sim 0.5, suggesting a strong local FIR radiation field, possibly from an active nucleus (AGN) component. We detect the [NII]205mics line for the first time at high-z. It shows comparable blue and red components, with a strikingly broad blue one, suggesting strong ionized gas flows.
We present a new determination of the UV galaxy luminosity function (LF) at redshift z ~ 7 and z ~ 8, and a first estimate at z ~ 9. An accurate determination of the form and evolution of the LF at high z is crucial for improving our knowledge of early galaxy evolution and cosmic reionization. Our analysis exploits fully the new, deepest WFC3/IR imaging from our HST UDF12 campaign, and includes a new, consistent analysis of all appropriate, shallower/wider-area HST data. Our new measurement of the evolving LF at z ~ 7-8 is based on a final catalogue of ~600 galaxies, and involves a step-wise maximum likelihood determination based on the redshift probability distribution for each object; this makes full use of the 11-band imaging now available in the HUDF, including the new UDF12 F140W data, and the deep Spitzer IRAC imaging. The final result is a determination of the z ~ 7 LF extending down to M_UV = -16.75, and the z ~ 8 LF down to M_UV = -17.00. Fitting a Schechter function, we find M* = -19.90 (+0.23/-0.28), log phi* = -2.96 (+0.18/-0.23), and a faint-end slope alpha=-1.90 (+0.14/-0.15) at z~7, and M* = -20.12 (+0.37/-0.48), log phi* = -3.35 (+0.28/-0.47), alpha=-2.02 (+0.22/-0.23) at z~8. These results strengthen suggestions that the evolution at z > 7 is more akin to `density evolution than the apparent `luminosity evolution seen at z ~ 5-7. We also provide the first meaningful information on the LF at z ~ 9, explore alternative extrapolations to higher z, and consider the implications for the evolution of UV luminosity density. Finally, we provide catalogues (including z_phot, M_UV and all photometry) for the 100 most robust z~6.5-11.9 galaxies in the HUDF used in this analysis. We discuss our results in the context of earlier work and the results of an independent analysis of the UDF12 data based on colour-colour selection (Schenker et al. 2013).
We present near-IR images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the WFC3/IR camera, of six passive and massive galaxies at redshift 1.3<z<2.4 (SSFR<10^{-2} Gyr^{-1}; stellar mass M~10^{11} M_{sun}), selected from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). These images, which have a spatial resolution of ~1.5 kpc, provide the deepest view of the optical rest-frame morphology of such systems to date. We find that the light profile of these galaxies is regular and well described by a Sersic model with index typical of todays spheroids. Their size, however, is generally much smaller than todays early types of similar stellar mass, with four out of six galaxies having r_e ~ 1 kpc or less, in quantitative agreement with previous similar measures made at rest-frame UV wavelengths. The images reach limiting surface brightness mu~26.5 mag arcsec^{-2} in the F160W bandpass; yet, there is no evidence of a faint halo in the galaxies of our sample, even in their stacked image. We also find that these galaxies have very weak morphological k-correction between the rest-frame UV (from the ACS z-band), and the rest--frame optical (WFC3 H-band): the Sersic index, physical size and overall morphology are independent or only mildly dependent on the wavelength, within the errors.
In this paper, we present a derivation of the rest-frame 1400A luminosity function (LF) at redshift six from a new application of the maximum likelihood method by exploring the five deepest HST/ACS fields, i.e., the HUDF, two UDF05 fields, and two GOODS fields. We work on the latest improved data products, which makes our results more robust than those of previous studies. We use un-binned data and thereby make optimal use of the information contained in the dataset. We focus on the analysis to a magnitude limit where the completeness is larger than 50% to avoid possibly large errors in the faint end slope that are difficult to quantify. We also take into account scattering in and out of the dropout sample due to photometric errors by defining for each object a probability that it belongs to the dropout sample. We find the best fit Schechter parameters to the z~6 LF are: alpha = 1.87 +/- 0.14, M* = -20.25 +/- 0.23, and phi*=1.77^{+0.62}_{-0.49} * 10^{-3} Mpc^{-3}. Such a steep slope suggests that galaxies, especially the faint ones, are possibly the main sources of ionizing photons in the universe at redshift six. We also combine results from all studies at z~6 to reach an agreement in 95% confidence level that -20.45<M*<-20.05 and -1.90<alpha<-1.55. The luminosity density has been found not to evolve significantly between z~6 and z~5, but considerable evolution is detected from z~6 to z~3.
Tadpole galaxies have a head-tail shape with a large clump of star formation at the head and a diffuse tail or streak of stars off to one side. We measured the head and tail masses, ages, surface brightnesses, and sizes for 66 tadpoles in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF), and we looked at the distribution of neighbor densities and tadpole orientations with respect to neighbors. The heads have masses of 10^7-10^8 Msun and photometric ages of ~0.1 Gyr for z~2. The tails have slightly larger masses than the heads, and comparable or slightly older ages. The most obvious interpretation of tadpoles as young merger remnants is difficult to verify. They have no enhanced proximity to other resolved galaxies as a class, and the heads, typically less than 0.2 kpc in diameter, usually have no obvious double-core structure. Another possibility is ram pressure interaction between a gas-rich galaxy and a diffuse cosmological flow. Ram pressure can trigger star formation on one side of a galaxy disk, giving the tadpole shape when viewed edge-on. Ram pressure can also strip away gas from a galaxy and put it into a tail, which then forms new stars and gravitationally drags along old stars with it. Such an effect might have been observed already in the Virgo cluster. Another possibility is that tadpoles are edge-on disks with large, off-center clumps. Analogous lop-sided star formation in UDF clump clusters are shown.