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Published September 24, 2015 | Supplemental Material + Submitted
Journal Article Open

The formation of submillimetre-bright galaxies from gas infall over a billion years

Abstract

Submillimetre-bright galaxies at high redshift are the most luminous, heavily star-forming galaxies in the Universe and are characterized by prodigious emission in the far-infrared, with a flux of at least five millijanskys at a wavelength of 850 micrometres. They reside in haloes with masses about 10^(13) times that of the Sun, have low gas fractions compared to main-sequence disks at a comparable redshift, trace complex environments and are not easily observable at optical wavelengths. Their physical origin remains unclear. Simulations have been able to form galaxies with the requisite luminosities, but have otherwise been unable to simultaneously match the stellar masses, star formation rates, gas fractions and environments. Here we report a cosmological hydrodynamic galaxy formation simulation that is able to form a submillimetre galaxy that simultaneously satisfies the broad range of observed physical constraints. We find that groups of galaxies residing in massive dark matter haloes have increasing rates of star formation that peak at collective rates of about 500–1,000 solar masses per year at redshifts of two to three, by which time the interstellar medium is sufficiently enriched with metals that the region may be observed as a submillimetre-selected system. The intense star formation rates are fuelled in part by the infall of a reservoir gas supply enabled by stellar feedback at earlier times, not through major mergers. With a lifetime of nearly a billion years, our simulations show that the submillimetre-bright phase of high-redshift galaxies is prolonged and associated with significant mass buildup in early-Universe proto-clusters, and that many submillimetre-bright galaxies are composed of numerous unresolved components (for which there is some observational evidence).

Additional Information

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Received 25 October 2014; Accepted 31 July 2015; Published online 23 September 2015. We thank M. J. Michałowski for providing observational data. Partial support for D.N. was provided by NSF AST-1009452, AST-1442650, NASA HST AR-13906.001 and a Cottrell College Science Award. P.H., C.H., M.T. and R.T. were funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF4561 and grant no. 776). P.H. acknowledges the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for support. C.-A.F.-G. was supported by NASA awards PF3-140106, NNX15AB22G and NSF AST-1412836. D.K. was supported by NSF AST-1412153. R.F. was supported by NASA HF-51304.01-A, and is a Hubble fellow. The simulations here were run on Stampede at TACC through NSF XSEDE allocations TG-AST120025, TG-AST130039 and TG-AST140023, NASA Pleiades, and the Haverford College cluster. Contributions: D.N. wrote the text, and led the radiative transfer simulations and analysis. D.N., M.T., T.R. and R.T. wrote the POWDERDAY software. R.T., C.H. and D.B. contributed to simulation analysis, and R.F., P.H., C.-A.F.-G. and D.K. performed the cosmological simulations. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Attached Files

Submitted - 1509.06377v1.pdf

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf1.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf2.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf3.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf4.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf5.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf6.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf7.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf8.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-sf9.jpg

Supplemental Material - nature15383-st1.jpg

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Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023