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Register a new userALMA reveals the molecular gas properties of 5 star-forming galaxies across the main sequence at 3 < z < 3.5
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We present the detection of CO(5-4) with S/N> 7 - 13 and a lower CO transition with S/N > 3 (CO(4-3) for 4 galaxies, and CO(3-2) for one) with ALMA in band 3 and 4 in five main sequence star-forming galaxies with stellar masses 3-6x10^10 M/M_sun at 3 < z < 3.5. We find a good correlation between the total far-infrared luminosity LFIR and the luminosity of the CO(5-4) transition LCO(5-4), where LCO(5-4) increases with SFR, indicating that CO(5-4) is a good tracer of the obscured SFR in these galaxies. The two galaxies that lie closer to the star-forming main sequence have CO SLED slopes that are comparable to other star-forming populations, such as local SMGs and BzK star-forming galaxies; the three objects with higher specific star formation rates (sSFR) have far steeper CO SLEDs, which possibly indicates a more concentrated episode of star formation. By exploiting the CO SLED slopes to extrapolate the luminosity of the CO(1-0) transition, and using a classical conversion factor for main sequence galaxies of alpha_CO = 3.8 M_sun(K km s^-1 pc^-2)^-1, we find that these galaxies are very gas rich, with molecular gas fractions between 60 and 80%, and quite long depletion times, between 0.2 and 1 Gyr. Finally, we obtain dynamical masses that are comparable with the sum of stellar and gas mass (at least for four out of five galaxies), allowing us to put a first constraint on the alpha_CO parameter for main sequence galaxies at an unprecedented redshift.
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We compare various star formation rate (SFR) indicators for star-forming galaxies at $1.4<z<2.5$ in the COSMOS field. The main focus is on the SFRs from the far-IR (PACS-Herschel data) with those from the ultraviolet, for galaxies selected according to the BzK criterion. FIR-selected samples lead to a vastly different slope of the SFR-stellar mass ($M_*$) relation, compared to that of the dominant main sequence population as measured from the UV, since the FIR selection picks predominantly only a minority of outliers. However, there is overall agreement between the main sequences derived with the two SFR indicators, when stacking on the PACS maps the BzK-selected galaxies. The resulting logarithmic slope of the SFR-{$M_*$} relation is $sim0.8-0.9$, in agreement with that derived from the dust-corrected UV-luminosity. Exploiting deeper 24$mu$m-Spitzer data we have characterized a sub-sample of galaxies with reddening and SFRs poorly constrained, as they are very faint in the $B$ band. The combination of Herschel with Spitzer data have allowed us to largely break the age/reddening degeneracy for these intriguing sources, by distinguishing whether a galaxy is very red in B-z because of being heavily dust reddened, or whether because star formation has been (or is being) quenched. Finally, we have compared our SFR(UV) to the SFRs derived by stacking the radio data and to those derived from the H$alpha$ luminosity of a sample of star-forming galaxies at $1.4<z<1.7$. The two sets of SFRs are broadly consistent as they are with the SFRs derived from the UV and by stacking the corresponding PACS data in various mass bins.
We conducted observations of 12CO(J=5-4) and dust thermal continuum emission toward twenty star-forming galaxies on the main sequence at z~1.4 using ALMA to investigate the properties of the interstellar medium. The sample galaxies are chosen to trace the distributions of star-forming galaxies in diagrams of stellar mass-star formation rate and stellar mass-metallicity. We detected CO emission lines from eleven galaxies. The molecular gas mass is derived by adopting a metallicity-dependent CO-to-H2 conversion factor and assuming a CO(5-4)/CO(1-0) luminosity ratio of 0.23. Molecular gas masses and its fractions (molecular gas mass/(molecular gas mass + stellar mass)) for the detected galaxies are in the ranges of (3.9-12) x 10^{10} Msun and 0.25-0.94, respectively; these values are significantly larger than those in local spiral galaxies. The molecular gas mass fraction decreases with increasing stellar mass; the relation holds for four times lower stellar mass than that covered in previous studies, and that the molecular gas mass fraction decreases with increasing metallicity. Stacking analyses also show the same trends. The dust thermal emissions were clearly detected from two galaxies and marginally detected from five galaxies. Dust masses of the detected galaxies are (3.9-38) x 10^{7} Msun. We derived gas-to-dust ratios and found they are 3-4 times larger than those in local galaxies. The depletion times of molecular gas for the detected galaxies are (1.4-36) x 10^{8} yr while the results of the stacking analysis show ~3 x 10^{8} yr. The depletion time tends to decrease with increasing stellar mass and metallicity though the trend is not so significant, which contrasts with the trends in local galaxies.
Lyman break analogues (LBAs) are a population of star-forming galaxies at low redshift (z ~ 0.2) selected in the ultraviolet (UV). These objects present higher star formation rates and lower dust extinction than other galaxies with similar masses and luminosities in the local universe. In this work we present results from a survey with the Combined Array for Research in Millimetre-wave Astronomy (CARMA) to detect CO(1-0) emission in LBAs, in order to analyse the properties of the molecular gas in these galaxies. Our results show that LBAs follow the same Schmidt-Kennicutt law as local galaxies. On the other hand, they have higher gas fractions (up to 66%) and faster gas depletion time-scales (below 1 Gyr). These characteristics render these objects more akin to high-redshift star-forming galaxies. We conclude that LBAs are a great nearby laboratory for studying the cold interstellar medium in low-metallicity, UV-luminous compact star-forming galaxies.
We study the molecular gas content of 24 star-forming galaxies at $z=3-4$, with a median stellar mass of $10^{9.1}$ M$_{odot}$, from the MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) Survey. Selected by their Lyman-alpha-emission and H-band magnitude, the galaxies show an average EW $approx 20$ angstrom, below the typical selection threshold for Lyman Alpha Emitters (EW $> 25$ angstrom), and a rest-frame UV spectrum similar to Lyman Break Galaxies. We use rest-frame optical spectroscopy from KMOS and MOSFIRE, and the UV features observed with MUSE, to determine the systemic redshifts, which are offset from Lyman alpha by 346 km s$^{-1}$, with a 100 to 600 km s$^{-1}$ range. Stacking CO(4-3) and [CI](1-0) (and higher-$J$ CO lines) from the ALMA Spectroscopic Survey of the HUDF (ASPECS), we determine $3sigma$ upper limits on the line luminosities of $4.0times10^{8}$ K km s$^{-1}$pc$^{2}$ and $5.6times10^{8}$ K km s$^{-1}$pc$^{2}$, respectively (for a 300 km s$^{-1}$ linewidth). Stacking the 1.2 mm and 3 mm dust continuum flux densities, we find a $3sigma$ upper limits of 9 $mu$Jy and $1.2$ $mu$Jy, respectively. The inferred gas fractions, under the assumption of a Galactic CO-to-H$_{2}$ conversion factor and gas-to-dust ratio, are in tension with previously determined scaling relations. This implies a substantially higher $alpha_{rm CO} ge 10$ and $delta_{rm GDR} ge 1200$, consistent with the sub-solar metallicity estimated for these galaxies ($12 + log(O/H) approx 7.8 pm 0.2$). The low metallicity of $z ge 3$ star-forming galaxies may thus make it very challenging to unveil their cold gas through CO or dust emission, warranting further exploration of alternative tracers, such as [CII].
The origin of the star forming main sequence ( i.e., the relation between star formation rate and stellar mass, globally or on kpc-scales; hereafter SFMS) remains a hotly debated topic in galaxy evolution. Using the ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching and STar formation (ALMaQUEST) survey, we show that for star forming spaxels in the main sequence galaxies, the three local quantities, star-formation rate surface density (sigsfr), stellar mass surface density (sigsm), and the h2~mass surface density (sigh2), are strongly correlated with one another and form a 3D linear (in log) relation with dispersion. In addition to the two well known scaling relations, the resolved SFMS (sigsfr~ vs. sigsm) and the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation (sigsfr~ vs. sigh2; SK relation), there is a third scaling relation between sigh2~ and sigsm, which we refer to as the `molecular gas main sequence (MGMS). The latter indicates that either the local gas mass traces the gravitational potential set by the local stellar mass or both quantities follow the underlying total mass distributions. The scatter of the resolved SFMS ($sigma sim 0.25$ dex) is the largest compared to those of the SK and MGMS relations ($sigma sim$ 0.2 dex). A Pearson correlation test also indicates that the SK and MGMS relations are more strongly correlated than the resolved SFMS. Our result suggests a scenario in which the resolved SFMS is the least physically fundamental and is the consequence of the combination of the SK and the MGMS relations.
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