Chaotic and Clumpy Galaxy Formation in an Extremely Massive Reionization-era Halo

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Documents

  • Justin S. Spilker
  • Christopher C. Hayward
  • Daniel P. Marrone
  • Manuel Aravena
  • Matthieu Bethermin
  • James Burgoyne
  • Scott C. Chapman
  • Thomas R. Greve
  • Gayathri Gururajan
  • Yashar D. Hezaveh
  • Ryley Hill
  • Katrina C. Litke
  • Christopher C. Lovell
  • Matthew A. Malkan
  • Eric J. Murphy
  • Desika Narayanan
  • Kedar A. Phadke
  • Cassie Reuter
  • Antony A. Stark
  • Nikolaus Sulzenauer
  • And 3 others
  • Joaquin D. Vieira
  • David Vizgan
  • Axel Weiss

The SPT 0311-58 system at z = 6.900 is an extremely massive structure within the reionization epoch and offers a chance to understand the formation of galaxies at an extreme peak in the primordial density field. We present 70 mas Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the dust continuum and [C II] 158 mu m emission in the central pair of galaxies and reach physical resolutions of similar to 100-350 pc, among the most detailed views of any reionization-era system to date. The observations resolve the source into at least a dozen kiloparsecsize clumps. The global kinematics and high turbulent velocity dispersion within the galaxies present a striking contrast to recent claims of dynamically cold thin-disk kinematics in some dusty galaxies just 800 Myr later at z similar to 4. We speculate that both gravitational interactions and fragmentation from massive parent disks have likely played a role in the overall dynamics and formation of clumps in the system. Each clump individually is comparable in mass to other 6 < z < 8 galaxies identified in rest-UV/optical deep field surveys, but with star formation rates elevated by a factor of similar to 3-5. Internally, the clumps themselves bear close resemblance to greatly scaled-up versions of virialized cloud-scale structures identified in low-redshift galaxies. Our observations are qualitatively similar to the chaotic and clumpy assembly within massive halos seen in simulations of high-redshift galaxies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume929
Issue number1
Number of pages8
ISSN2041-8205
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2022

    Research areas

  • High-redshift galaxies, Starburst galaxies, STAR-FORMING GALAXIES, MOLECULAR GAS, DUSTY, REDSHIFT, CATALOGS

ID: 319536954