Physical properties of z>4 submillimeter galaxies in the COSMOS field [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3799


We study the physical properties of a sample of 6 SMGs in the COSMOS field, spectroscopically confirmed to lie at z>4. We use new GMRT 325 MHz and 3 GHz JVLA data to probe the rest-frame 1.4 GHz emission at z=4, and to estimate the sizes of the star-forming (SF) regions of these sources, resp. Combining our size estimates with those available in the literature for AzTEC1 and AzTEC3 we infer a median radio-emitting size for our z>4 SMGs of (0.63″+/-0.12″)x(0.35″+/-0.05″) or 4.1×2.3 kpc^2 (major times minor axis; assuming z=4.5) or lower if we take the two marginally resolved SMGs as unresolved. This is consistent with the sizes of SF regions in lower-redshift SMGs, and local normal galaxies, yet higher than the sizes of SF regions of local ULIRGs. Our SMG sample consists of a fair mix of compact and more clumpy systems with multiple, perhaps merging, components. With an average formation time of ~280 Myr, derived through modeling of the UV-IR SEDs, the studied SMGs are young systems. The average stellar mass, dust temperature, and IR luminosity we derive are M*~1.4×10^11 M_sun, T_dust~43 K, and L_IR~1.3×10^13L_sun, resp. The average L_IR is up to an order of magnitude higher than for SMGs at lower redshifts. Our SMGs follow the correlation between dust temperature and IR luminosity as derived for Herschel-selected 0.1<z<2 galaxies. We study the IR-radio correlation for our sources and find a deviation from that derived for z<3 ULIRGs (<q_IR>=1.95+/-0.26 for our sample, compared to q~2.6 for IR luminous galaxies at z<2). In summary, we find that the physical properties derived for our z>4 SMGs put them at the high end of the L_IR-T_dust distribution of SMGs, and that our SMGs form a morphologically heterogeneous sample. Thus, further in-depth analyses of large, statistical samples of high-redshift SMGs are needed to fully understand their role in galaxy formation and evolution.

Read this paper on arXiv…

V. Smolcic, A. Karim, O. Miettinen, et. al.
Fri, 12 Dec 14
39/57

Comments: 16 pages, 8 figures, 6 tables; to appear in A&A