English

ALMA reveals metals yet no dust within multiple components in CR7

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2017-12-27 v2

Abstract

We present spectroscopic follow-up observations of CR7 with ALMA, targeted at constraining the infrared (IR) continuum and [CII]158μm_{158 \mu \rm m} line-emission at high spatial resolution matched to the HST/WFC3 imaging. CR7 is a luminous Lyα\alpha emitting galaxy at z=6.6z=6.6 that consists of three separated UV-continuum components. Our observations reveal several well-separated components of [CII] emission. The two most luminous components in [CII] coincide with the brightest UV components (A and B), blue-shifted by 150\approx 150 km s1^{-1} with respect to the peak of Lyα\alpha emission. Other [CII] components are observed close to UV clumps B and C and are blue-shifted by 300\approx300 and 80\approx80 km s1^{-1} with respect to the systemic redshift. We do not detect FIR continuum emission due to dust with a 3σ\sigma limiting luminosity LIR(Td=35K)<3.1×1010_{\rm IR} (T_d = 35 \rm \, K) < 3.1\times10^{10} L_{\odot}. This allows us to mitigate uncertainties in the dust-corrected SFR and derive SFRs for the three UV clumps A, B and C of 28, 5 and 7 M_{\odot} yr1^{-1}. All clumps have [CII] luminosities consistent within the scatter observed in the local relation between SFR and L[CII]_{\rm [CII]}, implying that strong Lyα\alpha emission does not necessarily anti-correlate with [CII] luminosity. Combining our measurements with the literature, we show that galaxies with blue UV slopes have weaker [CII] emission at fixed SFR, potentially due to their lower metallicities and/or higher photoionisation. Comparison with hydrodynamical simulations suggests that CR7's clumps have metallicities of 0.1<Z/Z<0.20.1<\rm Z/Z_{\odot}<0.2. The observed ISM structure of CR7 indicates that we are likely witnessing the build up of a central galaxy in the early Universe through complex accretion of satellites.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.06569,
  title  = {ALMA reveals metals yet no dust within multiple components in CR7},
  author = {J. Matthee and D. Sobral and F. Boone and H. Röttgering and D. Schaerer and M. Girard and A. Pallottini and L. Vallini and A. Ferrara and B. Darvish and B. Mobasher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.06569},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

17 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ