Imaging the environment of a z = 6.3 submillimeter galaxy with SCUBA-2

Abstract

We describe a search for submillimeter emission in the vicinity of one of the most distant, luminous galaxies known, HerMES FLS3 at z=6.34, exploiting it as a signpost to a potentially biased region of the early Universe, as might be expected in hierarchical structure formation models. Imaging to the confusion limit with the innovative, wide-field submillimeter bolometer camera, SCUBA-2, we are sensitive to colder and/or less luminous galaxies in the surroundings of HFLS3. We use the Millennium Simulation to illustrate that HFLS3 may be expected to have companions if it is as massive as claimed, but find no significant evidence from the surface density of SCUBA-2 galaxies in its vicinity, or their colors, that HFLS3 marks an over-density of dusty, star-forming galaxies. We cannot rule out the presence of dusty neighbours with confidence, but deeper 450-um imaging has the potential to more tightly constrain the redshifts of nearby galaxies, at least one of which likely lies at z>~5. If associations with HFLS3 can be ruled out, this could be taken as evidence that HFLS3 is less biased than a simple extrapolation of the Millennium Simulation may imply. This could suggest either that it represents a rare short-lived, but highly luminous, phase in the evolution of an otherwise typical galaxy, or that this system has suffered amplification due to a foreground gravitational lens and so is not as intrinsically luminous as claimed.

arXiv comment6 pages; 4 colour figures

References in corpus (35)

• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• Herschel Space Observatory - An ESA facility for far-infrared and submillimetre astronomy
• The broken hierarchy of galaxy formation
• The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) on the Herschel Space Observatory
• The Herschel-SPIRE instrument and its in-flight performance
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• SCUBA: A common-user submillimetre camera operating on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
• The Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey: HerMES
• Far Infrared and Submillimeter Emission from Galactic and Extragalactic Photo-Dissociation Regions
• A Dust-Obscured Massive Maximum-Starburst Galaxy at a Redshift of 6.34
• SCUBA-2: The 10000 pixel bolometer camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
• The SCUBA HAlf Degree Extragalactic Survey (SHADES) -- II. Submillimetre maps, catalogue and number counts
• The LABOCA Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
• Two bright submillimeter galaxies in a z=4.05 proto-cluster in GOODS-North, and accurate radio-infrared photometric redshifts
• An ALMA Survey of Submillimetre Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: The Far-Infrared Properties of SMGs
• SCUBA-2: iterative map-making with the Sub-Millimetre User Reduction Facility
• A massive proto-cluster of galaxies at a redshift of z {\approx} 5.3
• HerMES: The SPIRE confusion limit
• SCUBA-2: on-sky calibration using submillimetre standard sources
• Gas and dust in a submillimeter galaxy at z = 4.24 from the Herschel ATLAS
• A bright z=5.2 lensed submillimeter galaxy in the field of Abell 773: HLSJ091828.6+514223
• An excess of submm sources near 4C41.17: a candidate proto-cluster at z=3.8?
• HerMES: Candidate High-Redshift Galaxies Discovered with Herschel/SPIRE
• Gas-rich mergers and feedback are ubiqitous amongst starbursting radio galaxies, as revealed by JVLA, IRAM PdBI and Herschel
• A joint analysis of BLAST 250--500um and LABOCA 870um observations in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
• The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: blank-field number counts of 450um-selected galaxies and their contribution to the cosmic infrared background
• [CII] and 12CO(1-0) Emission Maps in HLSJ091828.6+514223: A Strongly Lensed Interacting System at z=5.24
• Submillimetre Observations of z>6 Quasars
• Dust temperture and the submillimetre-radio flux density ratio as a redshift indicator for distant galaxies
• HerMES: The Rest-Frame UV Emission and A Lensing Model for the z=6.34 Luminous Dusty Starburst Galaxy HFLS3
• Environments of z>5 quasars: searching for protoclusters at submillimetre wavelengths
• A filamentary structure of massive star-forming galaxies associated with an X-ray absorbed QSO at z=1.8
• An excess of star-forming galaxies in the fields of high-redshift QSOs
• Observations of flat-spectrum radio sources at 850 microns from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope II. April 2000 to June 2005

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Star formation relations and CO SLEDs across the J-ladder and redshift
• The space density of luminous dusty star-forming galaxies at $z>4$: SCUBA-2 and LABOCA imaging of ultrared galaxies from $Herschel$-ATLAS
• HerMES: ALMA Imaging of Herschel-selected Dusty Star-forming Galaxies
• HerMES: A search for high-redshift dusty galaxies in the HerMES Large Mode Survey - Catalogue, number counts and early results
• COLDz: A High Space Density of Massive Dusty Starburst Galaxies ~1 Billion Years after the Big Bang
• Ultra-Red Galaxies Signpost Candidate Proto-Clusters at High Redshift
• Red, redder, reddest: SCUBA-2 imaging of colour-selected \textit{Herschel} sources
• Rise of the Titans: Gas Excitation and Feedback in a Binary Hyper-Luminous Dusty Starburst Galaxy at z~6
• Investigating overdensities around z>6 galaxies through ALMA observations of [CII]
• ALMACAL. XI. Over-densities as signposts to proto-clusters? A cautionary tale
• The spectral energy distribution of galaxies at z > 2.5: Implications from the Herschel/SPIRE color-color diagram
• Environment of the submillimeter-bright massive starburst HFLS3 at $z\sim$6.34
• Exploring the environment, magnetic fields, and feedback effects of massive high-redshift galaxies with [CII]
• The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] Survey: Unveiling the baryon evolution in the ISM of $z\sim 5$ star-forming galaxies