L. Earle

A dust-obscured massive maximum-starburst galaxy at a redshift of 6.34

Massive present-day early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies probably gained the bulk of their stellar mass and heavy elements through intense, dust-enshrouded starbursts—that is, increased rates of star formation—in the most massive dark-matter haloes at early epochs. However, it remains unknown how soon after the Big Bang massive starburst progenitors exist. The measured redshift (z) distribution of dusty, massive starbursts has long been suspected to be biased low in z owing to selection effects, as confirmed by recent findings of systems with redshifts as high as ∼5 (refs 2–4). Here we report the identification of a massive starburst galaxy at z = 6.34 through a submillimetre colour-selection technique. We unambiguously determined the redshift from a suite of molecular and atomic fine-structure cooling lines. These measurements reveal a hundred billion solar masses of highly excited, chemically evolved interstellar medium in this galaxy, which constitutes at least 40 per cent of the baryonic mass. A ‘maximum starburst’ converts the gas into stars at a rate more than 2,000 times that of the Milky Way, a rate among the highest observed at any epoch. Despite the overall downturn in cosmic star formation towards the highest redshifts, it seems that environments mature enough to form the most massive, intense starbursts existed at least as early as 880 million years after the Big Bang.

The Warm Molecular Gas around the Cloverleaf Quasar

We present the first broadband λ = 1 mm spectrum toward the z = 2.56 Cloverleaf quasar, obtained with Z-Spec, a grating spectrograph on the 10.4 m Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. The 190-305 GHz observation band corresponds to the rest frame 272-444 μm, and we measure the dust continuum as well as all four transitions of carbon monoxide (CO) lying in this range. The power-law dust emission, F_ν = 14 mJy(ν/240 GHz)^(3.9) is consistent with the published continuum measurements. The CO J = 6 → 5, J = 8 → 7, and J = 9 → 8 measurements are the first, and now provide the highest-J CO information in this source. Our measured CO intensities are very close to the previously published interferometric measurements of J = 7 → 6, and we use all available transitions and our ^(13)CO upper limits to constrain the physical conditions in the Cloverleaf molecular gas disk. We find a large mass (2-50 × 10^9 M_⊙) of highly excited gas with thermal pressure nT > 10^6 K cm^(–3). The ratio of the total CO cooling to the far-IR dust emission exceeds that in the local dusty galaxies, and we investigate the potential heating sources for this bulk of warm molecular gas. We conclude that both UV photons and X-rays likely contribute, and discuss implications for a top-heavy stellar initial mass function arising in the X-ray-irradiated starburst. Finally, we present tentative identifications of other species in the spectrum, including a possible detection of the H_2O 2_(0,2) → 1_(1,1) transition at λ_(rest) = 303 μm.

Discovery of a Multiply Lensed Submillimeter Galaxy in Early HerMES Herschel/SPIRE Data

We report the discovery of a bright (

Z-Spec: a broadband millimeter-wave grating spectrometer: design, construction, and first cryogenic measurements

f(250\mum) > 400

The Dense Molecular Gas in the Circumnuclear Disk of NGC 1068

mJy), multiply-lensed submillimeter galaxy \obj\ in {\it Herschel}/SPIRE Science Demonstration Phase data from the HerMES project. Interferometric 880\mum\ Submillimeter Array observations resolve at least four images with a large separation of

Detection of an ultrabright submillimetre galaxy in the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Field using AzTEC/ASTE

\sim 9\arcsec

WaFIRS: a waveguide far-IR spectrometer enabling spectroscopy of high-z galaxies in the far-IR and submillimeter

. A high-resolution adaptive optics

Z-Spec: a broadband, direct-detection, millimeter-wave spectrometer

K_p

Modeling of the HerMES Submillimeter Source Lensed by a Dark Matter Dominated Foreground Group of Galaxies

image with Keck/NIRC2 clearly shows strong lensing arcs. Follow-up spectroscopy gives a redshift of

Z-Spec: a broadband direct-detection millimeter-wave spectrometer -- instrument status and first results

z=2.9575