English

Bulge-forming galaxies with an extended rotating disk at z~2

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2017-01-18 v2

Abstract

We present 0".2-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations at 870 um for 25 Halpha-seleced star-forming galaxies (SFGs) around the main-sequence at z=2.2-2.5. We detect significant 870 um continuum emission in 16 (64%) of these SFGs. The high-resolution maps reveal that the dust emission is mostly radiated from a single region close to the galaxy center. Exploiting the visibility data taken over a wide uvuv distance range, we measure the half-light radii of the rest-frame far-infrared emission for the best sample of 12 massive galaxies with logM*>11. We find nine galaxies to be associated with extremely compact dust emission with R_{1/2,870um}<1.5 kpc, which is more than a factor of 2 smaller than their rest-optical sizes, R_{1/2,1.6um}=3.2 kpc, and is comparable with optical sizes of massive quiescent galaxies at similar redshifts. As they have an exponential disk with Sersic index of n=1.2 in the rest-optical, they are likely to be in the transition phase from extended disks to compact spheroids. Given their high star formation rate surface densities within the central 1 kpc of Sigma SFR1kpc=40 Msol/yr/kpc^2, the intense circumnuclear starbursts can rapidly build up a central bulge with Sigma M*1kpc>1e10 Msol/kpc^2 in several hundred Myr, i.e. by z~2. Moreover, ionized gas kinematics reveal that they are rotation-supported with an angular momentum as large as that of typical SFGs at z=1-3. Our results suggest bulges are commonly formed in extended rotating disks by internal processes, not involving major mergers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.05412,
  title  = {Bulge-forming galaxies with an extended rotating disk at z~2},
  author = {Ken-ichi Tadaki and Reinhard Genzel and Tadayuki Kodama and Stijn Wuyts and Emily Wisnioski and Natascha M. Förster Schreiber and Andreas Burkert and Philipp Lang and Linda J. Tacconi and Dieter Lutz and Sirio Belli and Richard I. Davies and Bunyo Hatsukade and Masao Hayashi and Rodrigo Herrera-Camus and Soh Ikarashi and Shigeki Inoue and Kotaro Kohno and Yusei Koyama and J. Trevor Mendel and Kouichiro Nakanishi and Rhythm Shimakawa and Tomoko L. Suzuki and Yoichi Tamura and Ichi Tanaka and Hannah Übler and Dave J. Wilman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.05412},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

11 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ