Spatial correlation between submillimetre and Lyman-alpha galaxies in the SSA 22 protocluster
Abstract
Lyman-alpha emitters are thought to be young, low-mass galaxies with ages of ~10^8 yr. An overdensity of them in one region of the sky (the SSA 22 field) traces out a filamentary structure in the early Universe at a redshift of z = 3.1 (equivalent to 15 per cent of the age of the Universe) and is believed to mark a forming protocluster. Galaxies that are bright at (sub)millimetre wavelengths are undergoing violent episodes of star formation, and there is evidence that they are preferentially associated with high-redshift radio galaxies, so the question of whether they are also associated with the most significant large-scale structure growing at high redshift (as outlined by Lyman-alpha emitters) naturally arises. Here we report an imaging survey of 1,100-um emission in the SSA 22 region. We find an enhancement of submillimetre galaxies near the core of the protocluster, and a large-scale correlation between the submillimetre galaxies and the low-mass Lyman-alpha emitters, suggesting synchronous formation of the two very different types of star-forming galaxy within the same structure at high redshift. These results are in general agreement with our understanding of the formation of cosmic structure.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0905.0890,
title = {Spatial correlation between submillimetre and Lyman-alpha galaxies in the SSA 22 protocluster},
author = {Yoichi Tamura and Kotaro Kohno and Kouichiro Nakanishi and Bunyo Hatsukade and Daisuke Iono and Grant W. Wilson and Min S. Yun and Tadafumi Takata and Yuichi Matsuda and Tomoka Tosaki and Hajime Ezawa and Thushara A. Perera and Kimberly S. Scott and Jason E. Austermann and David H. Hughes and Itziar Aretxaga and Aeree Chung and Tai Oshima and Nobuyuki Yamaguchi and Kunihiko Tanaka and Ryohei Kawabe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.0890},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Published in Nature (7th May 2009 issue). The astro-ph paper includes the main text (10 pages, 2 figures, 1 table) and supplementary material (6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table)