Molecular Gas in the Halo Fuels the Growth of a Massive Cluster Galaxy at High Redshift

Abstract

The largest galaxies in the Universe reside in galaxy clusters. Using sensitive observations of carbon-monoxide, we show that the Spiderweb Galaxy -a massive galaxy in a distant protocluster- is forming from a large reservoir of molecular gas. Most of this molecular gas lies between the protocluster galaxies and has low velocity dispersion, indicating that it is part of an enriched inter-galactic medium. This may constitute the reservoir of gas that fuels the widespread star formation seen in earlier ultraviolet observations of the Spiderweb Galaxy. Our results support the notion that giant galaxies in clusters formed from extended regions of recycled gas at high redshift.

Published in Science on 2 Dec 2016 (accepted 21 Oct 2016), 20 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. Contains minor copy-editing differences with published version

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Molecular gas in the Herschel-selected strongly lensed submillimeter galaxies at z~2-4 as probed by multi-J CO lines
• Inspiraling Halo Accretion Mapped in Lyman-$\alpha$ Emission around a $z\sim 3$ Quasar
• MAHALO Deep Cluster Survey I. Accelerated and enhanced galaxy formation in the densest regions of a protocluster at z=2.5
• Extragalactic Radio Continuum Surveys and the Transformation of Radio Astronomy
• Environmental impacts on molecular gas in protocluster galaxies at z~2
• A radio-to-mm census of star-forming galaxies in protocluster 4C23.56 at z=2.5 : Gas mass and its fraction revealed with ALMA
• Ionised gas structure of 100 kpc in an over-dense region of the galaxy group COSMOS-Gr30 at z ~ 0.7
• Interplanetary Scintillation studies with the Murchison Wide-field Array II: Properties of sub-arcsecond compact sources at low radio frequencies
• Candidate high-z proto-clusters among the Planck compact sources, as revealed by Herschel-SPIRE
• The Dust and Molecular Gas in the Brightest Cluster Galaxy in MACS 1931.8-2635
• The hidden circumgalactic medium