Prof. Dimitra Rigopoulou

Abstract:

We report the detection of four IRAC sources in the GOODS-South field with an extremely red color of H - [3.6] > 4.5. The four sources are not detected in the deep Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 H-band image with H limit = 28.3mag. We find that only three types of SED templates can produce such a red H - [3.6] color: a very dusty SED with the Calzetti extinction of AV = 16mag at z = 0.8; a very dusty SED with the SMC extinction of AV = 8mag at z = 2.0- 2.2; and an 1Gyr SSP with AV ∼0.8 at z = 5.7. We argue that these sources are unlikely dusty galaxies at z ≤ 2.2 based on absent strong MIPS 24 μm emission. The old stellar population model at z > 4.5 remains a possible solution for the 4 sources. At z > 4.5, these sources have stellar masses of log(M */M ⊙) = 10.6-11.2. One source, ERS-1, is also a type-II X-ray QSO with L 2 - 8 keV = 1.6 × 1044 erg s-1. One of the four sources is an X-ray QSO and another one is a HyperLIRG, suggesting a galaxy-merging scenario for the formation of these massive galaxies at high redshifts. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

We explore the gas-to-dust mass ratio (M gas/M d) and the CO luminosity-to-M gas conversion factor (αCO) of two well-studied galaxies in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North field that are expected to have different star-forming modes, the starburst GN20 at z = 4.05 and the normal star-forming galaxy BzK-21000 at z = 1.52. Detailed sampling is available for their Rayleigh-Jeans emission via ground-based millimeter (mm) interferometry (1.1-6.6mm) along with Herschel PACS and SPIRE data that probe the peak of their infrared emission. Using the physically motivated Draine & Li models, as well as a modified blackbody function, we measure the dust mass (M dust) of the sources and find (2.0+0.7-0.6 × 109) M ∞ for GN20 and (8.6+0.6-0.9 × 108) M ∞ for BzK-21000. The addition of mm data reduces the uncertainties of the derived M dust by a factor of ∼2, allowing the use of the local M gas/M d versus metallicity relation to place constraints on the αCO values of the two sources. For GN20 we derive a conversion factor of αCO < 1.0 M ∞ pc-2(Kkms-1)-1, consistent with that of local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies, while for BzK-21000 we find a considerably higher value, αCO ∼4.0 M ∞ pc-2(Kkms-1)-1, in agreement with an independent kinematic derivation reported previously. The implied star formation efficiency is ∼25 L ∞/M ∞ for BzK-21000, a factor of ∼5-10 lower than that of GN20. The findings for these two sources support the existence of different disk-like and starburst star formation modes in distant galaxies, although a larger sample is required to draw statistically robust results. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.