ISM properties of a massive dusty star-forming galaxy discovered at z ∼ 7.

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal
• Main Authors: Strandet, M. L., Weiss, A., Breuck, C. De, Marrone, D. P., Vieira, J. D., Aravena, M., Ashby, M. L. N., Béthermin, M., Bothwell, M. S., Bradford, C. M., Carlstrom, J. E., Chapman, S. C., Cunningham, D. J. M., Chen, Chian-Chou, Fassnacht, C. D., Gonzalez, A. H., Greve, T. R., Gullberg, B., Hayward, C. C., Hezaveh, Y., Litke, K., Ma, J., Malkan, M., Menten, K. M., Miller, T., Murphy, E. J., Narayanan, D., Phadke, K. A., Rotermund, K. M., Spilker, J. S., Sreevani, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2017
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/24212/; http://dro.dur.ac.uk/24212/1/24212.pdf; https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa74b0

We report the discovery and constrain the physical conditions of the interstellar medium of the highest-redshift millimeter-selected dusty star-forming galaxy to date, SPT-S J031132−5823.4 (hereafter SPT0311−58), at $z=6.900\pm 0.002$. SPT0311−58 was discovered via its 1.4 mm thermal dust continuum emission in the South Pole Telescope (SPT)-SZ survey. The spectroscopic redshift was determined through an Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 3 mm frequency scan that detected CO(6–5), CO(7–6), and $[{\rm{C}}\,{\rm{I}}]$(2–1), and subsequently was confirmed by detections of CO(3–2) with the Australia Telescope Compact Array and $[{\rm{C}}\,{\rm{II}}]$ with APEX. We constrain the properties of the ISM in SPT0311−58 with a radiative transfer analysis of the dust continuum photometry and the CO and $[{\rm{C}}\,{\rm{I}}]$ line emission. This allows us to determine the gas content without ad hoc assumptions about gas mass scaling factors. SPT0311−58 is extremely massive, with an intrinsic gas mass of ${M}_{\mathrm{gas}}=3.3\pm 1.9\times {10}^{11}\,{M}_{\odot }$. Its large mass and intense star formation is very rare for a source well into the epoch of reionization.