No Arabic abstract
We report the discovery of a luminous z=5.78 star-forming galaxy in the Chandra Deep Field South. This galaxy was selected as an `i-drop from the GOODS public survey imaging with HST/ACS (object 3 in Stanway, Bunker & McMahon 2003, astro-ph/0302212). The large colour of (i-z)_AB=1.6 indicated a spectral break consistent with the Lyman-alpha forest absorption short-ward of Lyman-alpha at z~6. The galaxy is very compact (marginally resolved with ACS with a half-light radius of 0.08arcsec, so r_hl<0.5kpc/h_70). We have obtained a deep (5.5-hour) spectrum of this z(AB)=24.7 galaxy with the DEIMOS optical spectrograph on Keck, and here we report the discovery of a single emission line centred on 8245Ang detected at 20sigma with a flux of f~2E-17 ergs/s/cm^2. The line is clearly resolved with detectable structure at our resolution of better than 55km/s, and the only plausible interpretation consistent with the ACS photometry is that we are seeing Lyman-alpha emission from a z=5.78 galaxy. This is the highest redshift galaxy to be discovered and studied using HST data. The velocity width Delta(v)_FWHM=260km/s and rest-frame equivalent width (W=20Ang) indicate that this line is most probably powered by star formation, as an AGN would typically have larger values. The starburst interpretation is supported by our non-detection of the high-ionization NV1240Ang emission line, and the absence of this source from the deep Chandra X-ray images. The star formation rate inferred from the rest-frame UV continuum is 34M_sun/yr/h^2_70 (Omega_M=0.3, Omega_Lambda=0.7). This is the most luminous starburst known at z>5. Our spectroscopic redshift for this object confirms the validity of the i-drop technique of Stanway, Bunker & McMahon (2003) to select star-forming galaxies at z~6.
We report on the identification of the highest redshift submm-selected source currently known: LESSJ033229.4-275619. This source was detected in the Large Apex BOlometer CAmera (LABOCA) Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS) Submillimetre Survey (LESS), a sensitive 870-um survey (~1.2-mJy rms) of the full 30x30 ECDFS with the LABOCA camera on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope. The submm emission is identified with a radio counterpart for which optical spectroscopy provides a redshift of z=4.76. We show that the bolometric emission is dominated by a starburst with a star formation rate of ~1000 Msun/yr, although we also identify a moderate luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) in this galaxy. Thus it has characteristics similar to those of z~2 submm galaxies (SMGs), with a mix of starburst and obscured AGN signatures. This demonstrates that ultraluminous starburst activity is not just restricted to the hosts of the most luminous (and hence rare) QSOs at z~5, but was also occurring in less extreme galaxies at a time when the Universe was less than 10% of its current age. Assuming that we are seeing the major phase of star formation in this galaxy, then we demonstrate that it would be identified as a luminous distant red galaxy at z~3 and that the current estimate of the space density of z>4 SMGs is only sufficient to produce ~10% of the luminous red galaxy population at these early times. However, this leaves open the possibility that some of these galaxies formed through less intense, but more extended star formation events. If the progenitors of all of the luminous red galaxies at z~3 go through an ultraluminous starburst at z>4 then the required volume density of z>4 SMGs will exceed that predicted by current galaxy formation models by more than an order of magnitude.
We present results of VLT/FORS2 spectroscopy of galaxies at z~3 in the Hubble Deep Field-South (HDF-S). A sample of galaxies was drawn from the photo-z catalogue based on the HST/WFPC2 optical images and the deep near-infrared images obtained with VLT/ISAAC as a part of the FIRES project. We selected galaxies with photometric redshift between 2.5 and 4. Most of the selected galaxies are bright in rest-frame UV wavelengths and satisfy color selection criteria of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z~3. The number of target galaxies with I(AB)<25.0 was 15. We identified new 5 firm and 2 probable redshifts in addition to confirmations of previously known 6 galaxies at z~3. We found 6 among these 13 galaxies lie at a quite narrow redshift range at z = 2.80+-0.01. We examined stellar populations of the galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts through comparisons of their optical and near-IR photometry data with template spectra generated by a population synthesis code. The ages from the onset of star formation for these star-forming galaxies with I<=25.0 are typically 50-200 Myr, and their stellar masses are between (0.5-5) x 10^10 M_sun, consistent with previous studies. We also compared these SED fitting results with those for distant red galaxies (DRGs) at z>2 discovered by FIRES. DRGs have larger stellar masses, larger dust attenuation than our UV-luminous LBG sample, and their star formation rates are often comparable to LBGs. These trends suggest that majority of DRGs are indeed the most massive systems at the redshift and are still in the active star-forming phase. Unless the number density of DRGs is much smaller than LBGs, estimates based on UV selected sample could miss substantial part of stellar mass density at z~3.
We have combined multi-wavelength observations of a selected sample of starforming galaxies with galaxy evolution models in order to compare the results obtained for different SFR tracers and to study the effect that the evolution of the starforming regions has on them. We also aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the corrections due to extinction and nuclear activity on the derivation of the SFR. We selected the sample from Chandra data for the well studied region Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) and chose the objects that also have UV and IR data from GALEX and GOODS-Spitzer respectively. Our main finding is that there is good agreement between the extinction corrected SFR(UV) and the SFR(X), and we confirm the use of X-ray luminosities as a trustful tracer of recent star formation activity. Nevertheless, at SFR(UV) larger than about 5Msol/year there are several galaxies with an excess of SFR(X) suggesting the presence of an obscured AGN not detected in the optical spectra. We conclude that the IR luminosity is driven by recent star formation even in those galaxies where the SFR(X) is an order of magnitude higher than the SFR(UV) and therefore may harbour an AGN. One object shows SFR(X) much lower than expected based on the SFR(UV); this SFR(X) `deficit may be due to an early transient phase before most of the massive X-ray binaries were formed. An X-ray deficit could be used to select extremely young bursts in an early phase just after the explosion of the first supernovae associated with massive stars and before the onset of massive X-ray binaries.
In this Paper we present the source catalog obtained from a 942 ks exposure of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS), using ACIS-I on the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Catalog generation proceeded simultaneously using two different methods; a method of our own design using a modified version of the SExtractor algorithm, and a wavelet transform technique developed specifically for Chandra observations. The detection threshold has been set in order to have less than 10 spurious sources, as assessed by extensive simulations. We subdivided the catalog into four sections. The primary list consists of objects common to the two detection methods. Two secondary lists contain sources which were detected by: 1) the SExtractor algorithm alone and 2) the wavelet technique alone. The fourth list consists of possible diffuse or extended sources. The flux limits at the aimpoint for the soft (0.5--2 keV) and hard (2--10 keV) bands are 5.5E-17 erg/s/cm^2 and 4.5E-16 erg/s/cm^2 respectively. The total number of sources is 346; out of them, 307 were detected in the 0.5--2 keV band, and 251 in the 2--10 keV band. We also present optical identifications for the catalogued sources. Our primary optical data is R band imaging to a depth of R~26.5 (Vega). We found that the R-band/Chandra offsets are small, ~1 arcsec. Coordinate cross-correlation finds 85% of the Chandra sources covered in R to have counterparts within the 3-sigma error box (>~1.5 arcsec depending on off-axis angle and signal-to-noise). The unidentified fraction of sources, approximately ~10--15 %, is close to the limit expected from the observed X-ray flux to R-band ratio distribution for the identified sample.
(abridged) We identify a numerically significant population of heavily obscured AGNs at z~0.5-1 in the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) and Extended Chandra Deep Field-South by selecting 242 X-ray undetected objects with infrared-based star formation rates (SFRs) substantially higher (a factor of 3.2 or more) than their SFRs determined from the UV after correcting for dust extinction. An X-ray stacking analysis of 23 candidates in the central CDF-S region using the 4 Ms Chandra data reveals a hard X-ray signal with an effective power-law photon index of Gamma=0.6_{-0.4}^{+0.3}, indicating a significant contribution from obscured AGNs. Based on Monte Carlo simulations, we conclude that 74+-25% of the selected galaxies host obscured AGNs, within which ~95% are heavily obscured and ~80% are Compton-thick (CT; NH>1.5x10^{24} cm^{-2}). The heavily obscured objects in our sample are of moderate intrinsic X-ray luminosity [ ~ (0.9-4)x10^{42} erg/s in the 2-10 keV band]. The space density of the CT AGNs is (1.6+-0.5)x10^{-4} Mpc^{-3}. The z~0.5-1 CT objects studied here are expected to contribute ~1% of the total XRB flux in the 10-30 keV band, and they account for ~5-15% of the emission in this energy band expected from all CT AGNs according to population-synthesis models. In the 6--8 keV band, the stacked signal of the 23 heavily obscured candidates accounts for <5% of the unresolved XRB flux, while the unresolved ~25% of the XRB in this band can probably be explained by a stacking analysis of the X-ray undetected optical galaxies in the CDF-S (a 2.5 sigma stacked signal). We discuss prospects to identify such heavily obscured objects using future hard X-ray observatories.