A dusty star-forming galaxy at z=6 revealed by strong gravitational lensing
Abstract
Since their discovery, submillimetre-selected galaxies (SMGs) have revolutionized the field of galaxy formation and evolution. From the hundreds of square degrees mapped at submillimetre wavelengths, only a handful of sources have been confirmed to lie at z>5 and only two at z>6. All of these SMGs are rare examples of extreme starburst galaxies with star formation rates (SFRs) of >1000 M_sun/yr and therefore are not representative of the general population of dusty star-forming galaxies. Consequently, our understanding of the nature of these sources, at the earliest epochs, is still incomplete. Here we report the spectroscopic identification of a gravitationally amplified (mu = 9.3 +/- 1.0) dusty star-forming galaxy at z=6.027. After correcting for gravitational lensing, we derive an intrinsic less-extreme SFR of 380 +/- 50 M_sun/yr for this source and find that its gas and dust properties are similar to those measured for local Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs), extending the local trends to a poorly explored territory in the early Universe. The star-formation efficiency of this galaxy is similar to those measured in its local analogues, despite a ~12 Gyr difference in cosmic time.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1707.09022,
title = {A dusty star-forming galaxy at z=6 revealed by strong gravitational lensing},
author = {Jorge A. Zavala and Alfredo Montaña and David H. Hughes and Min S. Yun and R. J. Ivison and Elisabetta Valiante and David Wilner and Justin Spilker and Itziar Aretxaga and Stephen Eales and Vladimir Avila-Reese and Miguel Chávez and Asantha Cooray and Helmut Dannerbauer and James S. Dunlop and Loretta Dunne and Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz and Michal J. Michalowski and Gopal Narayanan and Hooshang Nayyeri and Ivan Oteo and Daniel Rosa González and David Sánchez-Argüelles and Stephen Serjeant and Matthew W. L. Smith and Elena Terlevich and Olga Vega and Alan Villalba and Paul van der Werf and Grant W. Wilson and Milagros Zeballos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.09022},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Published in Nature Astronomy. This is the author's version of the accepted paper (posted 6 months after publication in accordance with Nature policy). The published version is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0297-8