Imaging the environment of a z = 6.3 submillimeter galaxy with SCUBA-2
- United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ (United Kingdom)
- European Space Observatory, Karl Schwarzschild Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching (Germany)
- Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE (United Kingdom)
- Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
- Astronomy Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)
- Astronomy and Instrumentation Group, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales CF10 3XQ (United Kingdom)
- Joint Astronomy Centre, 660 North Ahoku Place, University Park, Hilo, HI 96720 (United States)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre, European Space Astronomy Centre, Apartado 79, E-28691 Villaneueva de la Canada, Madrid (Spain)
- Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Coburg Road, Halifax B3H 1A6 (Canada)
- Astrophysics Group, Imperial College London, Blackett Laboratory, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
- Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, 389 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 (United States)
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ (United Kingdom)
We describe a search for submillimeter emission in the vicinity of one of the most distant, luminous galaxies known, HerMES FLS3, at z = 6.34, exploiting it as a signpost to a potentially biased region of the early universe, as might be expected in hierarchical structure formation models. Imaging to the confusion limit with the innovative, wide-field submillimeter bolometer camera, SCUBA-2, we are sensitive to colder and/or less luminous galaxies in the surroundings of HFLS3. We use the Millennium Simulation to illustrate that HFLS3 may be expected to have companions if it is as massive as claimed, but find no significant evidence from the surface density of SCUBA-2 galaxies in its vicinity, or their colors, that HFLS3 marks an overdensity of dusty, star-forming galaxies. We cannot rule out the presence of dusty neighbors with confidence, but deeper 450 μm imaging has the potential to more tightly constrain the redshifts of nearby galaxies, at least one of which likely lies at z ≳ 5. If associations with HFLS3 can be ruled out, this could be taken as evidence that HFLS3 is less biased than a simple extrapolation of the Millennium Simulation may imply. This could suggest either that it represents a rare short-lived, but highly luminous, phase in the evolution of an otherwise typical galaxy, or that this system has suffered amplification due to a foreground gravitational lens and so is not as intrinsically luminous as claimed.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365051
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 793, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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