ALMA FIR View of Ultra High-redshift Galaxy Candidates at $z\sim$ 11-17: Blue Monsters or Low-$z$ Red Interlopers? [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.03896


We present ALMA Band 7 observations of a remarkably bright galaxy candidate at $z_{\rm phot}$=$16.7^{+1.9}{-0.3}$ ($M{\rm UV}$=$-21.6$), S5-z17-1, identified in JWST Early Release Observation data of Stephen’s Quintet. We do not detect the dust continuum at 866 $\mu$m, ruling out the possibility that S5-z17-1 is a low-$z$ dusty starburst with a star-formation rate (SFR) of $\gtrsim 30\,M_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$. We detect a 5.1$\sigma$ line feature at $338.726\pm0.007$ GHz exactly coinciding with the JWST source position, with a 2% likelihood of the signal being spurious. The most likely line identification would be [OIII]52$\mu$m at $z=16.01$ or [CII]158$\mu$m at $z=4.61$, whose line luminosities do not violate the non-detection of the dust continuum in both cases. Together with three other $z\gtrsim$ 11-13 candidate galaxies recently observed with ALMA, we conduct a joint ALMA and JWST spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis and find that the high-$z$ solution at $z\sim$11-17 is favored in every candidate as a very blue (UV continuum slope of $\approx-2.3$) and luminous ($M_{\rm UV}$ $\approx$ [$-$24:$-$21]) system. Still, we find in some candidates that reasonable SED fits ($\Delta$ $\chi^{2}\lesssim4$) are reproduced by type-II quasar and/or quiescent galaxy templates with strong emission lines at $z\sim3$-5, where such populations predicted from their luminosity functions and EW([OIII]+H$\beta$) distributions are abundant in the survey volumes used for the $z\sim$11-17 candidates. While these recent ALMA observation results have strengthened the likelihood of the high-$z$ solutions, lower-$z$ possibilities are not completely ruled out in some of the $z\sim$11-17 candidates.

Read this paper on arXiv…

S. Fujimoto, S. Finkelstein, D. Burgarella, et. al.
Wed, 9 Nov 22
37/76

Comments: 23 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables, submitted to ApJ