An ALMA survey of submillimetre galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: an unbiased study of SMG environments measured with narrow-band imaging
Journal article, 2024
Submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) are some of the most extreme star-forming systems in the Universe, whose place in the framework of galaxy evolution is as yet uncertain. It has been hypothesized that SMGs are progenitors of local early-type galaxies, requiring that SMGs generally reside in galaxy cluster progenitors at high redshift. We test this hypothesis and explore SMG environments using a narrow-band VLT/HAWK-I+GRAAL study of H α and [O III] emitters around an unbiased sample of three ALMA-identified and spectroscopically confirmed SMGs at z ∼ 2.3 and ∼ 3.3, where these SMGs were selected solely on spectroscopic redshift. Comparing with blank-field observations at similar epochs, we find that one of the three SMGs lies in an overdensity of emission-line sources on the ∼ 4 Mpc scale of the HAWK-I field of view, with overdensity parameter δg = 2.6+1.4-1.2. A second SMG is significantly overdense only on ≲ 1.6 Mpc scales and the final SMG is consistent with residing in a blank field environment. The total masses of the two overdensities are estimated to be log(Mh/M☉) = 12.1–14.4, leading to present-day masses of log(Mh, z=0/M☉) = 12.9–15.9. These results imply that SMGs occupy a range of environments, from overdense protoclusters or protogroups to the blank field, suggesting that while some SMGs are strong candidates for the progenitors of massive elliptical galaxies in clusters, this may not be their only possible evolutionary pathway.
submillimetre: galaxies
galaxies: evolution
galaxies: photometry
galaxies: star formation
Author
Thomas M. Cornish
Lancaster University
University of Oxford
J. L. Wardlow
Lancaster University
Heather Wade
Lancaster University
David Sobral
Lancaster University
BNP Paribas
W. N. Brandt
Pennsylvania State University
Eberly College of Science
P. Cox
Institut d 'Astrophysique de Paris
H. Dannerbauer
University of La Laguna
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
R. Decarli
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
B. Gullberg
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)
Kirsten Knudsen
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
John Stott
Lancaster University
Mark Swinbank
Durham University
F. Walter
Max Planck Society
P. van der Werf
Leiden University
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
00358711 (ISSN) 13652966 (eISSN)
Vol. 533 2 2399-2419Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stae1868