ALMA unveils wider environment of distant red protocluster core

Ivison, R J, Biggs, A D, Bremer, M, Arumugam, V and Dunne, L ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9880-2543 2020. ALMA unveils wider environment of distant red protocluster core. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 496 (4) , pp. 4358-4365. 10.1093/mnras/staa1802

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Abstract

We report observations with the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) of six submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) within 3 arcmin of the Distant Red Core (DRC) at z = 4.0, a site of intense cluster-scale star formation, first reported by Oteo et al. We find new members of DRC in three SMG fields; in two fields, the SMGs are shown to lie along the line of sight towards DRC; one SMG is spurious. Although at first sight this rate of association is consistent with earlier predictions, associations with the bright SMGs are rarer than expected, which suggests caution when interpreting continuum overdensities. We consider the implications of all 14 confirmed DRC components passing simultaneously through an active phase of star formation. In the simplest explanation, we see only the tip of the iceberg in terms of star formation and gas available for future star formation, consistent with our remarkable finding that the majority of newly confirmed DRC galaxies are not the brightest continuum emitters in their immediate vicinity. Thus, while ALMA continuum follow-up of SMGs identifies the brightest continuum emitters in each field, it does not necessarily reveal all the gas-rich galaxies. To hunt effectively for protocluster members requires wide and deep spectral-line imaging to uncover any relatively continuum-faint galaxies that are rich in atomic or molecular gas. Searching with short-baseline arrays or single-dish facilities, the true scale of the underlying gas reservoirs may be revealed.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	PDF made available in accordance with the publisher's policies: http://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/24618
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0035-8711
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 November 2020
Date of Acceptance:	17 June 2020
Last Modified:	18 May 2023 06:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/136199

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