Publication Date:
2015-07-16
Description:
We present Early Science observations with the Large Millimeter Telescope, AzTEC 1.1 mm continuum images and wide bandwidth spectra (73–111 GHz) acquired with the Redshift Search Receiver, towards four bright lensed submillimetre galaxies identified through the Herschel Lensing Survey-snapshot and the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array-2 Cluster Snapshot Survey. This pilot project studies the star formation history and the physical properties of the molecular gas and dust content of the highest redshift galaxies identified through the benefits of gravitational magnification. We robustly detect dust continuum emission for the full sample and CO emission lines for three of the targets. We find that one source shows spectroscopic multiplicity and is a blend of three galaxies at different redshifts ( z = 2.040, 3.252, and 4.680), reminiscent of previous high-resolution imaging follow-up of unlensed submillimetre galaxies, but with a completely different search method, that confirm recent theoretical predictions of physically unassociated blended galaxies. Identifying the detected lines as 12 CO ( J up = 2–5) we derive spectroscopic redshifts, molecular gas masses, and dust masses from the continuum emission. The mean H 2 gas mass of the full sample is (2.0 ± 0.2) x 10 11 M /μ, and the mean dust mass is (2.0 ± 0.2) x 10 9 M /μ, where μ 2–5 is the expected lens amplification. Using these independent estimations we infer a gas-to-dust ratio of GDR 55–75, in agreement with other measurements of submillimetre galaxies. Our magnified high-luminosity galaxies fall on the same locus as other high-redshift submillimetre galaxies, extending the $L^{\prime }_{\rm CO}$ – L FIR correlation observed for local luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies to higher far-infrared and CO luminosities.
Print ISSN:
0035-8711
Electronic ISSN:
1365-2966
Topics:
Physics
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