The kinematics of massive high-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies

Amvrosiadis, A.; Wardlow, J. L.; Birkin, J. E.; Smail, I.; Swinbank, A. M.; Nightingale, J.; Bertoldi, F.; Brandt, W. N.; Casey, C. M.; Chapman, S. C.; Chen, C. C.; Cox, P.; da Cunha, E.; Dannerbauer, H.; Dudzevičiūte, U.; Gullberg, B.; Hodge, J. A.; Knudsen, K. K.; Menten, K.; Walter, F.; van der Werf, P.

Abstract

We present a new method for modelling the kinematics of galaxies from interferometric observations by performing the optimization of the kinematic model parameters directly in visibility space instead of the conventional approach of fitting velocity fields produced with the CLEAN algorithm in real-space. We demonstrate our method on Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of12CO (2−1), (3−2), or (4−3) emission lines from an initial sample of 30 massive 850 μmselected dusty star-forming galaxies with far-infrared luminosities 1012 L in the redshift range z ∼ 1.2–4.7. Using the results from our modelling analysis for the 12 of the 20 sources with the highest signal-to-noise emission lines that show disc-like kinematics, we conclude the following: (i) our sample prefers a CO-to-H2 conversion factor, of αCO = 0.74 ± 0.37; (ii) these far-infrared luminous galaxies follow a similar Tully–Fisher relation between the circular velocity, Vcirc, and baryonic mass, Mb, as less strongly star-forming samples at high redshift, but extend this relation to much higher masses – showing that these are some of the most massive disc-like galaxies in the Universe; (iii) finally, we demonstrate support for an evolutionary link between massive high-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies and the formation of local early-type galaxies using the both the distributions of the baryonic and kinematic masses of these two populations on the Mb – σ plane and their relative space densities.

Citation

Amvrosiadis, A., Wardlow, J. L., Birkin, J. E., Smail, I., Swinbank, A. M., Nightingale, J., Bertoldi, F., Brandt, W. N., Casey, C. M., Chapman, S. C., Chen, C. C., Cox, P., da Cunha, E., Dannerbauer, H., Dudzevičiūte, U., Gullberg, B., Hodge, J. A., Knudsen, K. K., Menten, K., Walter, F., & van der Werf, P. (2025). The kinematics of massive high-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 536(4), 3757-3783. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae2760

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 19, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Dec 14, 2024
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 1, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 1, 2025
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 536
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 3757-3783
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae2760
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3771376