English

Spatially resolved dust properties over 50 kpc in a hyperluminous galaxy merger at $z = 4.6$

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-03-19 v1

Abstract

We present spatially resolved dust-continuum ALMA observations from rest-frame \sim60 to \sim600 μ\mum (bands 3-10) of the hyperluminous hot dust-obscured galaxy (hot DOG) WISE J224607.6-052634.9 (W2246-0526), at redshift z=4.6z=4.6. W2246-0526 is interacting with at least three companion galaxies, forming a system connected by tidal streams. We model the multiwavelength ALMA observations of the dust continuum using a modified blackbody, from which we derive the dust properties (mass, emissivity index, area of the emitting region, and temperature) in the hot DOG and resolved structures across a region of nearly \sim50 kpc. The peak temperature at the location of the hot DOG, \sim110 K, is likely the consequence of heating by the central quasar. The dust temperature drops to \sim40 K at a radius of \sim8 kpc, suggesting that heating by the quasar beyond that distance is nondominant. The dust in the connecting streams between the host and companion galaxies is at temperatures between 30-40 K, typical of starburst galaxies, suggesting it is most likely heated by recent, in-situ star formation. This is the first time dust properties are spatially resolved over several tens of kpc in a galaxy system beyond Cosmic Noon --this is more than six times the scales previously probed in galaxies at those redshifts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.10503,
  title  = {Spatially resolved dust properties over 50 kpc in a hyperluminous galaxy merger at $z = 4.6$},
  author = {Román Fernández Aranda and Tanio Díaz Santos and Evanthia Hatziminaoglou and Manuel Aravena and Daniel Stern and Lee Armus and Roberto J. Assef and Andrew W. Blain and Vassilis Charmandaris and Roberto Decarli and Peter R. M. Eisenhardt and Carl Ferkinhoff and Jorge González-López and Hyunsung D. Jun and Guodong Li and Mai Liao and Victoria Shevill and Devika Shobhana and Chao-Wei Tsai and Andrey Vayner and Jingwen Wu and Dejene Zewdie},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.10503},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A