THE REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTION OF DUSTY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES FROM THE SPT SURVEY
- Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69 D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
- European Southern Observatory, Karl Schwarzschild Straße 2, D-85748 Garching (Germany)
- Department of Astronomy and Department of Physics, University of Illinois, 1002 West Green St., Urbana, IL 61801 (United States)
- University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
- Núcleo de Astronomía, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército 441, Santiago (Chile)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada)
- Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (United Kingdom)
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
We use the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Cycle 1 to determine spectroscopic redshifts of high-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) selected by their 1.4 mm continuum emission in the South Pole Telescope (SPT) survey. We present ALMA 3 mm spectral scans between 84 and 114 GHz for 15 galaxies and targeted ALMA 1 mm observations for an additional eight sources. Our observations yield 30 new line detections from CO, [C i], [N ii], H{sub 2}O and NH{sub 3}. We further present Atacama Pathfinder Experiment [C ii] and CO mid- J observations for seven sources for which only a single line was detected in spectral-scan data from ALMA Cycle 0 or Cycle 1. We combine the new observations with previously published and new millimeter/submillimeter line and photometric data of the SPT-selected DSFGs to study their redshift distribution. The combined data yield 39 spectroscopic redshifts from molecular lines, a success rate of >85%. Our sample represents the largest data set of its kind today and has the highest spectroscopic completeness among all redshift surveys of high- z DSFGs. The median of the redshift distribution is z = 3.9 ± 0.4, and the highest-redshift source in our sample is at z = 5.8. We discuss how the selection of our sources affects the redshift distribution, focusing on source brightness, selection wavelength, and strong gravitational lensing. We correct for the effect of gravitational lensing and find the redshift distribution for 1.4 mm selected sources with a median redshift of z = 3.1 ± 0.3. Comparing to redshift distributions selected at shorter wavelengths from the literature, we show that selection wavelength affects the shape of the redshift distribution.
- OSTI ID:
- 22663050
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 822, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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