ISM Properties of a Massive Dusty Star-forming Galaxy Discovered at z ∼ 7

• Main Authors: Strandet, M. L., Weiss, A., Breuck, C. De, Marrone, D. P., Vieira, J. D., Aravena, M., Ashby, M. L. N., Béthermin, M., Bothwell, M. S., Bradford, C. M., Carlstrom, J. E., Chapman, S. C., Cunningham, D. J. M., Chen, Chian-Chou, Fassnacht, C. D., Gonzalez, A. H., Greve, T. R., Gullberg, B., Hayward, C. C., Hezaveh, Y., Litke, K., Ma, J., Malkan, M., Menten, K. M., Miller, T., Murphy, E. J., Narayanan, D., Phadke, K. A., Rotermund, K. M., Spilker, J. S., Sreevani, J.
• Other Authors: Univ Arizona, Steward Observ
• Language: en
• Published: IOP PUBLISHING LTD 2017
• Subjects: early universe; galaxies: high-redshift; galaxies: star formation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627112; http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/627112

We report the discovery and constrain the physical conditions of the interstellar medium of the highest-redshift millimeter-selected dusty star-forming galaxy to date, SPT-S J031132-5823.4 (hereafter SPT0311-58), at z = 6.900 +/- 0.002. SPT0311-58 was discovered via its 1.4 mm thermal dust continuum emission in the South Pole Telescope (SPT)-SZ survey. The spectroscopic redshift was determined through an Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 3 mm frequency scan that detected CO(6-5), CO(7-6), and [C I](2-1), and subsequently was confirmed by detections of CO(3-2) with the Australia Telescope Compact Array and[C II] with APEX. We constrain the properties of the ISM in SPT0311-58 with a radiative transfer analysis of the dust continuum photometry and the CO and [C I] line emission. This allows us to determine the gas content without ad hoc assumptions about gas mass scaling factors. SPT0311-58 is extremely massive, with an intrinsic gas mass of M-gas = 3.3 +/- 1.9 x 10(11) M-circle dot. Its large mass and intense star formation is very rare for a source well into the epoch of reionization.