A Molecular Line Scan in the Hubble Deep Field North
Creators
-
1.
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
-
2.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
-
3.
Cornell University
-
4.
European Southern Observatory
-
5.
Diego Portales University
-
6.
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
-
7.
University of Bonn
-
8.
CEA Saclay
-
9.
NOIRLab
-
10.
California Institute of Technology
-
11.
University of Cambridge
-
12.
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
-
13.
University of Arizona
Abstract
We present a molecular line scan in the Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N) that covers the entire 3 mm window (79-115 GHz) using the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. Our CO redshift coverage spans z ≾ 0.45, 1 ≾ z ≾ 1.9 and all z ≳ 2. We reach a CO detection limit that is deep enough to detect essentially all z > 1 CO lines reported in the literature so far. We have developed and applied different line-searching algorithms, resulting in the discovery of 17 line candidates. We estimate that the rate of false positive line detections is ~2/17. We identify optical/NIR counterparts from the deep ancillary database of the HDF-N for seven of these candidates and investigate their available spectral energy distributions. Two secure CO detections in our scan are identified with star-forming galaxies at z = 1.784 and at z = 2.047. These galaxies have colors consistent with the "BzK" color selection and they show relatively bright CO emission compared with galaxies of similar dust continuum luminosity. We also detect two spectral lines in the submillimeter galaxy HDF 850.1 at z = 5.183. We consider an additional nine line candidates as high quality. Our observations also provide a deep 3 mm continuum map (1σ noise level = 8.6 μJy beam^(–1)). Via a stacking approach, we find that optical/MIR bright galaxies contribute only to <50% of the star formation rate density at 1 < z < 3, unless high dust temperatures are invoked. The present study represents a first, fundamental step toward an unbiased census of molecular gas in "normal" galaxies at high-z, a crucial goal of extragalactic astronomy in the ALMA era.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 August 16; accepted 2013 December 19; published 2014 January 30. We thank the referee, S. Serjeant, for his useful comments which improved the quality of our paper. This work is based on observations carried out with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany) and IGN (Spain). This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (The Astropy Collaboration 2013). Support for RD was provided by the DFG priority program 1573 "The physics of the interstellar medium." F.W., D.R. and E.d.C. acknowledge the Aspen Center for Physics where parts of this manuscript were written.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_782_2_78.pdf
Submitted - 1312.6364v1.pdf
Files
0004-637X_782_2_78.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 45819
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140519-103013082
Related works
- Describes
- http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6364 (URL)
Funding
- Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU)
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- 1573
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Dates
- Created
-
2014-05-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Physics Department