No Arabic abstract
We present spatially-resolved imaging obtained with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) of three CO lines in two high-redshift gravitationally lensed dusty star-forming galaxies, discovered by the South Pole Telescope. Strong lensing allows us to probe the structure and dynamics of the molecular gas in these two objects, at z=2.78 and z=5.66, with effective source-plane resolution of less than 1kpc. We model the lensed emission from multiple CO transitions and the dust continuum in a consistent manner, finding that the cold molecular gas as traced by low-J CO always has a larger half-light radius than the 870um dust continuum emission. This size difference leads to up to 50% differences in the magnification factor for the cold gas compared to dust. In the z=2.78 galaxy, these CO observations confirm that the background source is undergoing a major merger, while the velocity field of the other source is more complex. We use the ATCA CO observations and comparable resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array dust continuum imaging of the same objects to constrain the CO-H_2 conversion factor with three different procedures, finding good agreement between the methods and values consistent with those found for rapidly star-forming systems. We discuss these galaxies in the context of the star formation - gas mass surface density relation, noting that the change in emitting area with observed CO transition must be accounted for when comparing high-redshift galaxies to their lower redshift counterparts.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 860 micrometer imaging of four high-redshift (z=2.8-5.7) dusty sources that were detected using the South Pole Telescope (SPT) at 1.4 mm and are not seen in existing radio to far-infrared catalogs. At 1.5 arcsec resolution, the ALMA data reveal multiple images of each submillimeter source, separated by 1-3 arcsec, consistent with strong lensing by intervening galaxies visible in near-IR imaging of these sources. We describe a gravitational lens modeling procedure that operates on the measured visibilities and incorporates self-calibration-like antenna phase corrections as part of the model optimization, which we use to interpret the source structure. Lens models indicate that SPT0346-52, located at z=5.7, is one of the most luminous and intensely star-forming sources in the universe with a lensing corrected FIR luminosity of 3.7 X 10^13 L_sun and star formation surface density of 4200 M_sun yr^-1 kpc^-2. We find magnification factors of 5 to 22, with lens Einstein radii of 1.1-2.0 arcsec and Einstein enclosed masses of 1.6-7.2x10^11 M_sun. These observations confirm the lensing origin of these objects, allow us to measure the their intrinsic sizes and luminosities, and demonstrate the important role that ALMA will play in the interpretation of lensed submillimeter sources.
SPT0311-58 is the most massive infrared luminous system discovered so far during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the molecular interstellar medium at z = 6.9, through high-resolution observations of the CO(6-5), CO(7-6), CO(10-9), [CI](2-1), and p-H2O(211-202) lines and dust continuum emission with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The system consists of a pair of intensely star-forming gravitationally lensed galaxies (labelled West and East). The intrinsic far-infrared luminosity is (16 $pm$ 4)$timesrm 10^{12} rm L_{odot}$ in West and (27 $pm$ 4)$timesrm 10^{11} rm L_{odot}$ in East. We model the dust, CO, and [CI] using non-local thermodynamic equilibrium radiative transfer models and estimate the intrinsic gas mass to be (5.4 $pm$ 3.4)$timesrm 10^{11} rm M_{odot}$ in West and (3.1 $pm$ 2.7)$timesrm 10^{10} rm M_{odot}$ in East. We find that the CO spectral line energy distribution in West and East are typical of high-redshift sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs). The CO-to-H2 conversion factor ($alpha_{CO}$) and the gas depletion time scales estimated from the model are consistent with the high-redshift SMGs in the literature within the uncertainties. We find no evidence of evolution of depletion time with redshift in SMGs at z > 3. This is the most detailed study of molecular gas content of a galaxy in the EoR to-date, with the most distant detection of H2O in a galaxy without any evidence for active galactic nuclei in the literature.
Nuclear activity and star formation play relevant roles in the early stages of galaxy formation. We aim at identifying them in high redshift galaxies by exploiting high-resolution and sensitivity X-ray and mm data to confirm their presence and relative role in contributing to the galaxy SEDs and energy budget. We present the data, model and analysis in the X-ray and mm bands for two strongly lensed galaxies, SDP.9 and SDP.11, selected in the Herschel-ATLAS catalogues as having an excess emission in the mid-IR regime at z>1.5, suggesting nuclear activity in the early stages of galaxy formation. We observed both of them in X-ray with Chandra and analyzed the high-resolution mm data available in the ALMA Science Archive for SDP9, and, by combining the information available, we reconstructed the source morphology. Both the targets were detected in the X-ray, strongly indicating the presence of highly obscured nuclear activity. High resolution ALMA observations for SDP9 in continuum and CO(6-5) spectral line allowed us to estimate the lensed galaxy redshift to a better accuracy than pre-ALMA estimates and to model the emission of the optical, mm, and X-ray band emission for this galaxy. We demonstrated that the X-ray emission is generated in the nuclear environment and it strongly support the presence of nuclear activity in this object. Hence, we identified weak nuclear activity associated with high-z galaxies with large star formation rates, useful to extend the investigation of the relationship between star formation and nuclear activity to two intrinsically less luminous, high-z star forming galaxies than was possible so far. Given our results only for two objects, they solely cannot constrain the evolutionary models, but provide us with interesting hints and set an observational path towards addressing the role of star formation and nuclear activity in forming galaxies.
We report the discovery of a molecular wind signature from a massive intensely star-forming clump of a few $10^9$ Msun, in the strongly gravitationally lensed submillimeter galaxy the Emerald (PLCK_G165.7+49.0) at z=2.236. The Emerald is amongst the brightest high-redshift galaxies on the submillimeter sky, and was initially discovered with the Planck satellite. The system contains two magnificient structures with projected lengths of 28.5 and 21 formed by multiple, near-infrared arcs, falling behind a massive galaxy cluster at z=0.35, as well as an adjacent filament that has so far escaped discovery in other wavebands. We used HST/WFC3 and CFHT optical and near-infrared imaging together with IRAM and SMA interferometry of the CO(4-3) line and 850 $mu$m dust emission to characterize the foreground lensing mass distribution, construct a lens model with Lenstool, and calculate gravitational magnification factors between 20 and 50 in most of the source. The majority of the star formation takes place within two massive star-forming clumps which are marginally gravitationally bound and embedded in a $9 times 10^{10}$ Msun, fragmented disk with 20% gas fraction. One of the clumps shows a pronounced blue wing in the CO(4-3) line profile, which we interpret as a wind signature. The mass outflow rates are high enough for us to suspect that the clump might become unbound within a few tens of Myr, unless the outflowing gas can be replenished by gas accretion from the surrounding disk. The velocity offset of -200 km s$^{-1}$ is above the escape velocity of the clump, but not that of the galaxy overall, suggesting that much of this material might ultimately rain back onto the galaxy and contribute to fueling subsequent star formation.
The Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) has identified large numbers of dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) over a wide range in redshift. A detailed understanding of these DSFGs is hampered by the limited spatial resolution of Herschel. We present 870um 0.45 resolution imaging from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of 29 HerMES DSFGs with far-infrared (FIR) flux densities in between the brightest of sources found by Herschel and fainter DSFGs found in ground-based sub-millimeter (sub-mm) surveys. We identify 62 sources down to the 5-sigma point-source sensitivity limit in our ALMA sample (sigma~0.2mJy), of which 6 are strongly lensed (showing multiple images) and 36 experience significant amplification (mu>1.1). To characterize the properties of the ALMA sources, we introduce and make use of uvmcmcfit, a publicly available Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis tool for interferometric observations of lensed galaxies. Our lens models tentatively favor intrinsic number counts for DSFGs with a steep fall off above 8mJy at 880um. Nearly 70% of the Herschel sources comprise multiple ALMA counterparts, consistent with previous research indicating that the multiplicity rate is high in bright sub-mm sources. Our ALMA sources are located significantly closer to each other than expected based on results from theoretical models as well as fainter DSFGs identified in the LABOCA ECDFS Submillimeter Survey. The high multiplicity rate and low projected separations argue in favor of interactions and mergers driving the prodigious emission from the brightest DSFGs as well as the sharp downturn above S_880=8mJy.