A Pilot for a VLA HI Deep Field
Abstract
High-resolution 21-cm HI deep fields provide spatially and kinematically resolved neutral gas maps at different redshifts, which are key to understanding galaxy evolution across cosmic time and testing predictions of cosmological simulations. Here we present results from a pilot for the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES) done with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). We take advantage of the newly expanded capabilities of the telescope to probe the redshift interval 0<z<0.193 in one observation. We observe the COSMOS field for 50 hours, which contains 413 galaxies with optical spectroscopic redshifts in the imaged field of view of 34' x 34' and the observed redshift interval. We have detected neutral hydrogen gas in 33 galaxies in different environments spanning the probed redshift range, including three without a previously known spectroscopic redshift. The detections have a range of HI and stellar masses, indicating the diversity of galaxies we are probing. We discuss the observations, data reduction, results and highlight interesting detections. We find that the VLA's B-array is the ideal configuration for HI deep fields since its long spacings mitigate RFI. This pilot shows that the VLA is ready to carry out such a survey, and serves as a test for future HI deep fields planned with other SKA pathfinders.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1303.2659,
title = {A Pilot for a VLA HI Deep Field},
author = {Ximena Fernández and J. H. van Gorkom and Kelley M. Hess and D. J. Pisano and Kathryn Kreckel and Emmanuel Momjian and Attila Popping and Tom Oosterloo and Laura Chomiuk and M. A. W. Verheijen and Patricia A. Henning and David Schiminovich and Matthew A. Bershady and Eric M. Wilcots and Nick Scoville},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.2659},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in ApJL