ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey: A spectral stacking analysis of [C II] in lensed z similar to 6 galaxies
Journal article, 2021

Context. The properties of galaxies at redshift z>6 hold the key to our understanding of the early stages of galaxy evolution and can potentially identify the sources of the ultraviolet radiation that give rise to the epoch of reionisation. The far-infrared cooling line of [C II] at 158 mu m is known to be bright and correlate with the star formation rate (SFR) of low-redshift galaxies, and hence is also suggested to be an important tracer of star formation and interstellar medium properties for very high-redshift galaxies. Aims. With the aim to study the interstellar medium properties of gravitationally lensed galaxies at z>6, we search for [C II] and thermal dust emission in a sample of 52 > 6 galaxies observed by the ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey. Methods. We perform our analysis using LINESTACKER, stacking both [C II] and continuum emission. The target sample is selected from multiple catalogues, and the sample galaxies have spectroscopic redshift or low-uncertainty photometric redshifts (sigma(z)<0.02) in nine galaxy clusters. Source properties of the target galaxies are either extracted from the literature or computed using spectral energy distribution fitting. Both weighted-average and median stacking are used, on both the full sample and three sub-samples. Results. Our analyses find no detection of either [C II] or continuum. An upper limit on L-[CII] is derived, implying that [C II] remains marginally consistent for low-SFR z>6 galaxies but likely is under-luminous compared to the local L-[CII]-SFR relationship. We discuss potential biases and possible physical effects that may be the cause of the non-detection. Further, the upper limit on the dust continuum implies that less than half of the star formation is obscured.

galaxies: evolution galaxies: star formation

galaxies: statistics

galaxies: high-redshift

galaxies: formation

radio lines: galaxies

Author

Jean Baptiste Jolly

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics

Nicolas Laporte

University of Cambridge

Johan Richard

Université de Lyon

Seiji Fujimoto

University of Copenhagen

Kotaro Kohno

University of Tokyo

Yiping Ao

Chinese Academy of Sciences

University of Science and Technology of China

Franz E. Bauer

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Millennium Institute of Astrophysics

Eiichi Egami

University of Arizona

Daniel Espada

Universidad de Granada

SKA Organisation

Miroslava Dessauges-Zavadsky

University of Geneva

Georgios E. Magdis

University of Copenhagen

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

Daniel Schaerer

Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP)

University of Geneva

Fengwu Sun

University of Arizona

Francesco Valentino

University of Copenhagen

Wei-Hao Wang

Academia Sinica

Adi Zitrin

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Astronomy and Astrophysics

0004-6361 (ISSN) 1432-0746 (eISSN)

Vol. 652 A128

Galaxy evolution: Tracing the gas fraction of star-forming galaxies

Swedish Research Council (VR) (2015-05580), 2016-01-01 -- 2019-12-31.

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Physics Topics

DOI

10.1051/0004-6361/202140878

More information

Latest update

9/13/2021