An ALMA survey of the S2CLS UDS field: optically invisible submillimetre galaxies

We analyse a robust sample of 30 near-infrared-faint (KAB > 25.3, 5σ) submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) selected from a 0.96 deg2 field to investigate their properties and the cause of their faintness in optical/near-infrared wavebands. Our analysis exploits precise identifications based on Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) 870-μm continuum imaging, combined with very deep near-infrared imaging from the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey. We estimate that SMGs with KAB > 25.3 mag represent 15 ± 2 per cent of the total population brighter than S870 = 3.6 mJy, with a potential surface density of ∼450 deg−2 above S870 ≥ 1 mJy. As such, they pose a source of contamination in surveys for both high-redshift ‘quiescent’ galaxies and very high redshift Lyman-break galaxies. We show that these K-faint SMGs represent the tail of the broader submillimetre population, with comparable dust and stellar masses to KAB ≤ 25.3 mag SMGs, but lying at significantly higher redshifts (z = 3.44 ± 0.06 versus z = 2.36 ± 0.11) and having higher dust attenuation (AV = 5.2 ± 0.3 versus AV = 2.9 ± 0.1). We investigate the origin of the strong dust attenuation and find indications that these K-faint galaxies have smaller dust continuum sizes than the KAB ≤ 25.3 mag galaxies, as measured by ALMA, which suggests their high attenuation is related to their compact sizes. We identify a correlation of dust attenuation with star formation rate surface density (SFR), with the K-faint SMGs representing the higher SFR and highest AV galaxies. The concentrated, intense star formation activity in these systems is likely to be associated with the formation of spheroids in compact galaxies at high redshifts, but as a result of their high obscuration these galaxies are completely missed in ultraviolet, optical, and even near-infrared surveys

Deep Herschel view of obscured star formation in the Bullet cluster

We use deep, five band (100–500 μm) data from the Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) to fully constrain the obscured star formation rate, SFRFIR, of galaxies in the Bullet cluster (z = 0.296), and a smaller background system (z = 0.35) in the same field. Herschel detects 23 Bullet cluster members with a total SFRFIR = 144±14 yr-1. On average, the background system contains brighter far-infrared (FIR) galaxies, with ~50% higher SFRFIR (21 galaxies; 207± 9 yr-1). SFRs extrapolated from 24 μm flux via recent templates (SFR24 µm) agree well with SFRFIR for ~60% of the cluster galaxies. In the remaining ~40%, SFR24 µm underestimates SFRFIR due to a significant excess in observed S100/S24 (rest frame S75/S18) compared to templates of the same FIR luminosity

An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey UKIDSS/UDS field: High-resolution dust continuum morphologies and the link between sub-millimetre galaxies and spheroid formation

We present an analysis of the morphology and profiles of the dust continuum emission in 153 bright sub-millimetre galaxies (SMGs) detected with ALMA at signal to noise ratios of >8 in high-resolution 0′′.18 (∼1 kpc) 870 μm maps. We measure sizes, shapes and light profiles for the rest-frame far-infrared emission from these luminous star-forming systems and derive a median effective radius (Re) of 0′′.10 ± 0′′.04 for our sample with a median flux of S870=5.6 ± 0.2 mJy. We find that the apparent axial ratio (b/a) distribution of the SMGs peaks at b/a ∼ 0.63 ± 0.02 and is best described by triaxial morphologies, while their emission profiles are best fit by a Sérsic model with n ≃ 1.0 ± 0.1, similar to exponential discs. This combination of triaxiality and n ∼ 1 Sérsic index are characteristic of bars and we suggest that the bulk of the 870 μm dust continuum emission in the central ∼2 kpc of these galaxies arises from bar-like structures. As such we caution against using the orientation of shape of the bright dust continuum emission at ≂ resolution to assess either the orientation of any disc on the sky or tits inclination. By stacking our 870 μm maps we recover faint extended dust continuum emission on ∼4 kpc scales which contributes 13 ± 1% of the total 870 μm emission. The scale of this extended emission is similar to that seen for the molecular gas and rest-frame optical light in these systems, suggesting that it represents an extended dust and gas disc at radii larger than the more active bar component. Including this component in our estimated size of the sources we derive a typical effective radius of ≃ 0′′.15 ± 0′′.05 or 1.2 ± 0.4 kpc. Our results suggest that kpc-scale bars are ubiquitous features of high star-formation rate systems at z ≫ 1, while these systems also contain fainter and more extended gas and stellar envelopes. We suggest that these features, seen some 10–12 Gyrs ago, represent the formation phase of the earliest galactic-scale components: stellar bulges

An ALMA survey of the brightest sub-millimetre sources in the SCUBA-2–COSMOS field

We present an ALMA study of the ∼ 180 brightest sources in the SCUBA-2 850-μm map of the COSMOS field from the S2COSMOS survey, as a pilot study for AS2COSMOS – a full survey of the ∼ 1,000 sources in this field. In this pilot we have obtained 870-μm continuum maps of an essentially complete sample of the brightest 182 sub-millimetre sources (⁠S850μm> 6.2 mJy) in COSMOS. Our ALMA maps detect 260 sub-millimetre galaxies (SMGs) spanning a range in flux density of S870μm = 0.7–19.2 mJy. We detect more than one SMG counterpart in 34 ± 2 per cent of sub-millimetre sources, increasing to 53 ± 8 per cent for SCUBA-2 sources brighter than S850μm> 12 mJy. We estimate that approximately one-third of these SMG–SMG pairs are physically associated (with a higher rate for the brighter secondary SMGs, S870μm≳ 3 mJy), and illustrate this with the serendipitous detection of bright [C II] 157.74 μm line emission in two SMGs, AS2COS 0001.1 & 0001.2 at z = 4.63, associated with the highest significance single-dish source. Using our source catalogue we construct the interferometric 870-μm number counts at S870μm> 6.2 mJy. We use the extensive archival data of this field to construct the multiwavelength spectral energy distribution of each AS2COSMOS SMG, and subsequently model this emission with MAGPHYS to estimate their photometric redshifts. We find a median photometric redshift for the S870μm> 6.2 mJy AS2COSMOS sample of z = 2.87 ± 0.08, and clear evidence for an increase in the median redshift with 870-μm flux density suggesting strong evolution in the bright-end of the 870 μm luminosity function

A Machine-learning Method for Identifying Multiwavelength Counterparts of Submillimeter Galaxies: Training and Testing Using AS2UDS and ALESS

We describe the application of supervised machine-learning algorithms to identify the likely multiwavelength counterparts to submillimeter sources detected in panoramic, single-dish submillimeter surveys. As a training set, we employ a sample of 695 (S 870μm gsim 1 mJy) submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) with precise identifications from the ALMA follow-up of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey's UKIDSS-UDS field (AS2UDS). We show that radio emission, near-/mid-infrared colors, photometric redshift, and absolute H-band magnitude are effective predictors that can distinguish SMGs from submillimeter-faint field galaxies. Our combined radio + machine-learning method is able to successfully recover ~85% of ALMA-identified SMGs that are detected in at least three bands from the ultraviolet to radio. We confirm the robustness of our method by dividing our training set into independent subsets and using these for training and testing, respectively, as well as applying our method to an independent sample of ~100 ALMA-identified SMGs from the ALMA/LABOCA ECDF-South Survey (ALESS). To further test our methodology, we stack the 870 μm ALMA maps at the positions of those K-band galaxies that are classified as SMG counterparts by the machine learning but do not have a >4.3σ ALMA detection. The median peak flux density of these galaxies is S 870μm = (0.61 ± 0.03) mJy, demonstrating that our method can recover faint and/or diffuse SMGs even when they are below the detection threshold of our ALMA observations. In future, we will apply this method to samples drawn from panoramic single-dish submillimeter surveys that currently lack interferometric follow-up observations to address science questions that can only be tackled with large statistical samples of SMGs

Red, redder, reddest: SCUBA-2 imaging of colour-selected Herschel sources

High-redshift, luminous, dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) constrain the extremity of galaxy formation theories. The most extreme are discovered through follow-up on candidates in large area surveys. Here, we present extensive 850 μ m SCUBA-2 follow-up observations of 188 red DSFG candidates from the Herschel Multitiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) Large Mode Survey, covering 274 deg2. We detected 87 per cent with a signal-to-noise ratio >3 at 850 μ m. We introduce a new method for incorporating the confusion noise in our spectral energy distribution fitting by sampling correlated flux density fluctuations from a confusion limited map. The new 850 μ m data provide a better constraint on the photometric redshifts of the candidates, with photometric redshift errors decreasing from σz/(1 + z) ≈ 0.21 to 0.15. Comparison spectroscopic redshifts also found little bias (〈(z − zspec)/(1 + zspec)〉 = 0.08). The mean photometric redshift is found to be 3.6 with a dispersion of 0.4 and we identify 21 DSFGs with a high probability of lying at z > 4. After simulating our selection effects we find number counts are consistent with phenomenological galaxy evolution models. There is a statistically significant excess of WISE-1 and SDSS sources near our red galaxies, giving a strong indication that lensing may explain some of the apparently extreme objects. Nevertheless, our sample includes examples of galaxies with the highest star formation rates in the Universe (≫103 M⊙ yr−1)

The Dust and [C ii] Morphologies of Redshift ∼4.5 Sub-millimeter Galaxies at ∼200 pc Resolution: The Absence of Large Clumps in the Interstellar Medium at High-redshift

We present deep, high-resolution (0 03, 200 pc) ALMA Band 7 observations covering the dust continuum and [C II] λ157.7 μm emission in four z ∼ 4.4–4.8 sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs) selected from the ALESS and AS2UDS surveys. The data show that the rest-frame 160 μm (observed 345 GHz) dust emission is consistent with smooth morphologies on kpc scales for three of the sources. One source, UDS 47.0, displays apparent substructure, but this is also consistent with a smooth morphology—as indicated by simulations showing that smooth exponential disks can appear clumpy when observed at the high angular resolution (0 03) and depth of these observations (s345 GHz ~ 27 47 – μJy beam−1 ). The four SMGs are bright [C II] emitters. We extract [C II] spectra from the high-resolution data, and recover ∼20%–100% of the [C II] flux and ∼40%–80% of the dust continuum emission, compared to the previous lower-resolution observations. When tapered to 0 2 resolution, our maps recover ∼80%–100% of the continuum emission, indicating that ∼60% of the emission is resolved out on ∼200 pc scales. We find that the [C II] emission in high-redshift galaxies is more spatially extended than the rest-frame 160 μm dust continuum by a factor of 1.6 ± 0.4. By considering the L[ ] C II /LFIR ratio as a function of the star formation rate surface density (SSFR), we revisit the [C II] deficit and suggest that the decline in the L[ ] C II /LFIR ratio as a function of SSFR is consistent with local processes. We also explore the physical drivers that may be responsible for these trends and can give rise to the properties found in the densest regions of SMGs

Multi-wavelength Properties of Radio- and Machine-learning-identified Counterparts to Submillimeter Sources in S2COSMOS

We identify multi-wavelength counterparts to 1147 submillimeter sources from the S2COSMOS SCUBA-2 survey of the COSMOS field by employing a recently developed radio+machine-learning method trained on a large sample of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)–identified submillimeter galaxies (SMGs), including 260 SMGs identified in the AS2COSMOS pilot survey. In total, we identify 1222 optical/near-infrared (NIR)/radio counterparts to the 897 S2COSMOS submillimeter sources with S 850 > 1.6 mJy, yielding an overall identification rate of (78 ± 9)%. We find that (22 ± 5)% of S2COSMOS sources have multiple identified counterparts. We estimate that roughly 27% of these multiple counterparts within the same SCUBA-2 error circles very likely arise from physically associated galaxies rather than line-of-sight projections by chance. The photometric redshift of our radio+machine-learning-identified SMGs ranges from z = 0.2 to 5.7 and peaks at z = 2.3 ± 0.1. The AGN fraction of our sample is (19 ± 4)%, which is consistent with that of ALMA SMGs in the literature. Comparing with radio/NIR-detected field galaxy population in the COSMOS field, our radio+machine-learning-identified counterparts of SMGs have the highest star formation rates and stellar masses. These characteristics suggest that our identified counterparts of S2COSMOS sources are a representative sample of SMGs at z lesssim 3. We employ our machine-learning technique to the whole COSMOS field and identified 6877 potential SMGs, most of which are expected to have submillimeter emission fainter than the confusion limit of our S2COSMOS surveys (${S}_{850\mu {\rm{m}}}\lesssim 1.5$ mJy). We study the clustering properties of SMGs based on this statistically large sample, finding that they reside in high-mass dark matter halos ((1.2 ± 0.3) × 1013 h −1 ${M}_{\odot }$), which suggests that SMGs may be the progenitors of massive ellipticals we see in the local universe

Revealing the Stellar Mass and Dust Distributions of Submillimeter Galaxies at Redshift 2

We combine high-resolution ALMA and HST/CANDELS observations of 20 submillimeter galaxies (SMGs), predominantly from the AS2UDS survey at z sime 2, with bright rest-frame optical counterparts (${K}_{{\rm{s}}}\lesssim 22.9$) to investigate the resolved structural properties of their dust and stellar components. We derive two-dimensional stellar-mass distributions that are inferred from spatial mass-to-light ratio (${\text{}}M/{L}^{* }$) corrections based on rest-frame optical colors. Due to the high central column densities of dust in our SMGs, our mass distributions likely represent a lower limit to the true central mass density. The centroid positions between the inferred stellar-mass and the dust distributions agree within 1.1 kpc, indicating an overall good spatial agreement between the two components. The majority of our sources exhibit compact dust configurations relative to the stellar component (with a median ratio of effective radii ${R}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{dust}}/{R}_{{\rm{e}},* }$ = 0.6). This ratio does not change with specific star formation rate over the factor of 30 spanned by our targets, sampling the locus of "normal" main-sequence galaxies up to the starburst regime, $\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{sSFR}/{\mathrm{sSFR}}_{\mathrm{MS}})\geqslant 0.5$. Unlike typical spiral galaxies in the local universe, our results imply that massive SMGs are experiencing centrally enhanced star formation. The sizes and stellar densities of our SMGs are in agreement with those of the passive population at z = 1.5, which is consistent with these systems being the descendants of z sime 2 SMGs