The Complete Redshift Distribution of Dusty Star-forming Galaxies from the SPT-SZ Survey

• Main Authors: Reuter, C., Vieira, J. D., Spilker, J. S., Weiss, A., Aravena, M., Archipley, M., Bethermin, M., Chapman, S. C., De Breuck, C., Dong, C., Everett, W. B., Fu, J., Greve, T. R., Hayward, C. C., Hill, R., Hezaveh, Y., Jarugula, S., Litke, K., Malkan, M., Marrone, D. P., Narayanan, D., Phadke, K. A., Stark, A. A., Strandet, M. L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2020
• Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies astro-ph.GA; FOS Physical sciences; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2006.14060; https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14060

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) has systematically identified 81 high-redshift, strongly gravitationally lensed, dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) in a 2500 square degree cosmological mm-wave survey. We present the final spectroscopic redshift survey of this flux-limited ($S_{870\, \mathrm{μm}} > 25\, \mathrm{mJy}$) sample, initially selected at $1.4$ mm. The redshift survey was conducted with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array across the $3$ mm spectral window, targeting carbon monoxide line emission. By combining these measurements with ancillary data, the SPT sample is now spectroscopically complete, with redshifts spanning $1.9$$$$5$, making this the largest sample of high-redshift DSFGs to-date, and enabling the "high-redshift tail" of extremely luminous DSFGs to be measured. Though galaxy formation models struggle to account for the SPT redshift distribution, the larger sample statistics from this complete and well-defined survey will help inform future theoretical efforts. : 56 pages, 25 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ