Issue |
A&A
Volume 624, April 2019
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A23 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833777 | |
Published online | 02 April 2019 |
Planck’s Dusty GEMS
VII. Atomic carbon and molecular gas in dusty starburst galaxies at z = 2 to 4⋆
1
Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay, France
e-mail: nicole.nesvadba@ias.u-psud.fr
2
Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
3
European Southern Observatory, ESO Vitacura, Alonso de Cordova 3107, Vitacura, Casilla 19001, Santiago, Chile
4
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA Santiago Central Offices, Alonso de Cordova 3107, Vitacura, Cailla 763-0355 Santiago, Chile
5
Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden
6
Laboratoire AIM, CEA/DSM/IRFU, CNRS, Université Paris-Diderot, Bât 709, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
7
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR 7095, 75014 Paris, France
8
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver 6658, British Columbia, Canada
Received:
4
July
2018
Accepted:
20
December
2018
The bright 3P1–3P0 ([CI] 1–0) and 3P2–3P1 ([CI] 2–1) lines of atomic carbon are becoming more and more widely employed as tracers of the cold neutral gas in high-redshift galaxies. Here we present observations of these lines in the 11 galaxies of the set of Planck’s Dusty GEMS, the brightest gravitationally lensed galaxies on the extragalactic submillimeter sky probed by the Planck satellite. We have [CI] 1–0 and [CI] 2–1 measurements for seven and eight of these galaxies, respectively, including four galaxies where both lines have been measured. We use our observations to constrain the gas excitation mechanism, excitation temperatures, optical depths, atomic carbon and molecular gas masses, and carbon abundances. Ratios of LCI/LFIR are similar to those found in the local universe, and suggest that the total cooling budget through atomic carbon has not significantly changed in the last 12 Gyr. Both lines are optically thin and trace 1 − 6 × 107 M⊙ of atomic carbon. Carbon abundances, XCI, are between 2.5 and 4 × 10−5, for an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) CO-to-H2 conversion factor of αCO = 0.8 M⊙ / [K km s−1 pc2]. Ratios of molecular gas masses derived from [CI] 1–0 and CO agree within the measurement uncertainties for five galaxies, and agree to better than a factor of two for another two with [CI] 1–0 measurements, after carefully taking CO excitation into account. This does not support the idea that intense, high-redshift starburst galaxies host large quantities of “CO-dark” gas. These results support the common assumptions underlying most molecular gas mass estimates made for massive, dusty, high-redshift starburst galaxies, although the good agreement between the masses obtained with both tracers cannot be taken as independent confirmation of either αCO or XCI.
Key words: galaxies: high-redshift / galaxies: formation / galaxies: starburst / galaxies: abundances
© N. P. H. Nesvadba et al. 2019
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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