Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userA titanic interstellar medium ejection from a massive starburst galaxy at redshift 1.4
77
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Feedback-driven winds from star formation or active galactic nuclei might be a relevant channel for the abrupt quenching star formation in massive galaxies. However, both observations and simulations support the idea that these processes are non-conflictingly co-evolving and self-regulating. Furthermore, evidence of disruptive events that are capable of fast quenching is rare, and constraints on their statistical prevalence are lacking. Here we present a massive starburst galaxy at z=1.4 which is ejecting $46 pm 13$% of its molecular gas mass at a startling rate of $gtrsim 10,000$ M$_{odot}{rm yr}^{-1}$. A broad component that is red-shifted from the galaxy emission is detected in four (low- and high-J) CO and [CI] transitions and in the ionized phase, which ensures a robust estimate of the expelled gas mass. The implied statistics suggest that similar events are potentially a major star-formation quenching channel. However, our observations provide compelling evidence that this is not a feedback-driven wind, but rather material from a merger that has been probably tidally ejected. This finding challenges some literature studies in which the role of feedback-driven winds might be overstated.
rate research
Read More
Massive present-day early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies probably gained the bulk of their stellar mass and heavy elements through intense, dust-enshrouded starbursts - that is, increased rates of star formation - in the most massive dark matter halos at early epochs. However, it remains unknown how soon after the Big Bang such massive starburst progenitors exist. The measured redshift distribution of dusty, massive starbursts has long been suspected to be biased low in redshift owing to selection effects, as confirmed by recent findings of systems out to redshift z~5. Here we report the identification of a massive starburst galaxy at redshift 6.34 through a submillimeter color-selection technique. We unambiguously determined the redshift from a suite of molecular and atomic fine structure cooling lines. These measurements reveal a hundred billion solar masses of highly excited, chemically evolved interstellar medium in this galaxy, which constitutes at least 40% of the baryonic mass. A maximum starburst converts the gas into stars at a rate more than 2,000 times that of the Milky Way, a rate among the highest observed at any epoch. Despite the overall downturn of cosmic star formation towards the highest redshifts, it seems that environments mature enough to form the most massive, intense starbursts existed at least as early as 880 million years after the Big Bang.
In the early Universe finding massive galaxies that have stopped forming stars present an observational challenge as their rest-frame ultraviolet emission is negligible and they can only be reliably identified by extremely deep near-infrared surveys. These have revealed the presence of massive, quiescent early-type galaxies appearing in the universe as early as z$sim$2, an epoch 3 Gyr after the Big Bang. Their age and formation processes have now been explained by an improved generation of galaxy formation models where they form rapidly at z$sim$3-4, consistent with the typical masses and ages derived from their observations. Deeper surveys have now reported evidence for populations of massive, quiescent galaxies at even higher redshifts and earlier times, however the evidence for their existence, and redshift, has relied entirely on coarsely sampled photometry. These early massive, quiescent galaxies are not predicted by the latest generation of theoretical models. Here, we report the spectroscopic confirmation of one of these galaxies at redshift z=3.717 with a stellar mass of 1.7$times$10$^{11}$ M$_odot$ whose absorption line spectrum shows no current star-formation and which has a derived age of nearly half the age of the Universe at this redshift. The observations demonstrates that the galaxy must have quickly formed the majority of its stars within the first billion years of cosmic history in an extreme and short starburst. This ancestral event is similar to those starting to be found by sub-mm wavelength surveys pointing to a possible connection between these two populations. Early formation of such massive systems is likely to require significant revisions to our picture of early galaxy assembly.
Unlike spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way, the majority of the stars in massive elliptical galaxies were formed in a short period early in the history of the Universe. The duration of this formation period can be measured using the ratio of magnesium to iron abundance ([Mg/Fe]), which reflects the relative enrichment by core-collapse and type Ia supernovae. For local galaxies, [Mg/Fe] probes the combined formation history of all stars currently in the galaxy, including younger and metal-poor stars that were added during late-time mergers. Therefore, to directly constrain the initial star-formation period, we must study galaxies at earlier epochs. The most distant galaxy for which [Mg/Fe] had previously been measured is at z~1.4, with [Mg/Fe]=0.45(+0.05,-0.19). A slightly earlier epoch (z~1.6) was probed by stacking the spectra of 24 massive quiescent galaxies, yielding an average [Mg/Fe] of 0.31+/-0.12. However, the relatively low S/N of the data and the use of index analysis techniques for both studies resulted in measurement errors that are too large to allow us to form strong conclusions. Deeper spectra at even earlier epochs in combination with analysis techniques based on full spectral fitting are required to precisely measure the abundance pattern shortly after the major star-forming phase (z>2). Here we report a measurement of [Mg/Fe] for a massive quiescent galaxy at z=2.1. With [Mg/Fe]=0.59+/-0.11, this galaxy is the most Mg-enhanced massive galaxy found so far, having twice the Mg enhancement of similar-mass galaxies today. The abundance pattern of the galaxy is consistent with enrichment exclusively by core-collapse supernovae and with a star-formation timescale of 0.1-0.5 Gyr - characteristics that are similar to population II stars in the Milky Way. With an average past SFR of 600-3000 Msol/yr, this galaxy was among the most vigorous star-forming galaxies in the Universe.
Using high-resolution (sub-kiloparsec scale) submillimeter data obtained by ALMA, we analyze the star formation rate (SFR), gas content and kinematics in SDP 81, a gravitationally-lensed star-forming galaxy at redshift 3. We estimate the SFR surface density ($Sigma_{mathrm{SFR}}$) in the brightest clump of this galaxy to be $357^{+135}_{-85},mathrm{M_{odot},yr^{-1},kpc^{-2}}$, over an area of $0.07pm0.02,mathrm{kpc}^2$. Using the intensity-weighted velocity of CO$,$(5-4), we measure the turbulent velocity dispersion in the plane-of-the-sky and find $sigma_{mathrm{v,turb}} = 37pm5,mathrm{km,s}^{-1}$ for the star-forming clump, in good agreement with previous estimates along the line of sight. Our measurements of gas surface density, freefall time and turbulent Mach number reveal that the role of turbulence is vital to explaining the observed SFR in this clump. While the Kennicutt Schmidt (KS) relation predicts a SFR surface density of $Sigma_{mathrm{SFR,KS}} = 52pm17,mathrm{M_{odot},yr^{-1},kpc^{-2}}$, the single-freefall model by Krumholz, Dekel and McKee (KDM) predicts $Sigma_{mathrm{SFR,KDM}} = 106pm37,mathrm{M_{odot},yr^{-1},kpc^{-2}}$. In contrast, the multi-freefall (turbulence) model by Salim, Federrath and Kewley (SFK) gives $Sigma_{mathrm{SFR,SFK}} = 491^{+139}_{-194},mathrm{M_{odot},yr^{-1},kpc^{-2}}$. Although the SFK relation overestimates the SFR in this clump (possibly due to the ignorance of magnetic field), it provides the best prediction among the available models. Finally, we compare the star formation and gas properties of this high-redshift galaxy to local star-forming regions and find that the SFK relation provides the best estimates of SFR in both local and high-redshift galaxies.
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.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
