The far-infrared fine-structure line [CII] at 1900.5\,GHz is known to be one of the brightest cooling lines in local galaxies, and therefore it has been suggested to be an efficient tracer for star-formation in very high-redshift galaxies. However, recent results for galaxies at z>6 have yielded numerous non-detections in star-forming galaxies, except for quasars and submillimeter galaxies. We report the results of ALMA observations of two lensed, star-forming galaxies at z=6.029 and z=6.703. The galaxy A383-5.1 (star formation rate [SFR] of 3.2 M⊙ yr−1 and magnification of μ=11.4±1.9) shows a line detection with L[CII]=8.9×106 L⊙, making it the lowest L[CII] detection at z>6. For MS0451-H (SFR = 0.4 M⊙ yr−1 and μ=100±20) we provide an upper limit of L[CII]<3×105 L⊙, which is 1\,dex below the local SFR-L[CII] relations. The results are consistent with predictions for low-metallicity galaxies at z>6, however, other effects could also play a role in terms of decreasing L[CII]. The detection of A383-5.1 is encouraging and suggests that detections are possible, but much fainter than initially predicted.
@article{arxiv.1603.02277,
title = {[CII] emission in z ~ 6 strongly lensed, star-forming galaxies},
author = {Kirsten K. Knudsen and Johan Richard and Jean-Paul Kneib and Mathilde Jauzac and Benjamin Clement and Guillaume Drouart and Eiichi Egami and Lukas Lindroos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.02277},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
5 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters