ALMA hints at the presence of turbulent disk galaxies at z > 5

¹ Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy
e-mail: eleonora.parlanti@sns.it
² INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio, Via Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
³ Physics Departement, University of Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo, 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
⁴ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Via Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
⁵ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50127 Firenze, Italy
⁶ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Universitá di Firenze, Via G. Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, (Firenze), Italy

Received: 1 December 2022
Accepted: 24 March 2023

Abstract

Context. High-redshift galaxies are expected to be more turbulent than local galaxies because of their smaller size and higher star formation and thus stronger feedback from star formation, frequent mergers events, and gravitational instabilities. However, this scenario has recently been questioned by the observational evidence of a few galaxies at z ∼ 4 − 5 with a gas velocity dispersion similar to what is observed in the local population.

Aims. Our goal is to determine whether galaxies in the first billion years of the Universe have already formed a dynamically cold rotating disk similar to the local counterparts.

Methods. We studied the gas kinematic of 22 main-sequence star-forming galaxies at z > 5 and determined their dynamical state by estimating the ratio of the rotational velocity and of the gas velocity dispersion. We mined the ALMA public archive and exploited the [C II] and [O III] observations to perform a kinematic analysis of the cold and warm gas of z > 5 main-sequence galaxies. We compared our results with what was found in the local and distant Universe and investigated the evolution of the gas velocity dispersion with redshift. We also compared the observations with theoretical expectations to assess the main driver of the gas turbulence at z > 5.

Results. The gas kinematics of the high-z galaxy population observed with ALMA is consistent within the errors with rotating but turbulent disks. We indeed infer a velocity dispersion that is systematically higher by 4–5 times than the local galaxy population and the z ∼ 5 dust-obscured galaxies reported in the literature. The difference between our results and those reported at similar redshift can be ascribed to the systematic difference in the galaxy properties in the two samples: the disks of massive dusty galaxies are dynamically colder than the disks of dust-poor galaxies. The comparison with the theoretical predictions suggests that the main driver of the velocity dispersion in high-redshift galaxies is the gravitational energy that is released by the transport of mass within the disk. Finally, we stress that future deeper ALMA high-angular resolution observations are crucial to constrain the kinematic properties of high-z galaxies and to distinguish rotating disks from kiloparsec-scale mergers.