paper

An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 CLS UDS field: Physical properties of 707 Sub-millimetre Galaxies

arXiv:1910.07524 · doi:10.1093/mnras/staa769

Abstract

We analyse the physical properties of a large, homogeneously selected sample of ALMA-located sub-mm galaxies (SMGs). This survey, AS2UDS, identified 707 SMGs across the ~1 sq.deg. field, including ~17 per cent, which are undetected at >~25.7 mag. We interpret their ultraviolet-to-radio data using MAGPHYS and determine a median redshift of z=2.61+-0.08 (1 range of z=1.8-3.4) with just ~6 per cent at z>4. Our survey provides a sample of massive dusty galaxies at z>~1, with median dust and stellar masses of =(6.8+-0.3)x10M (thus, gas masses of ~10M) and (1.26+-0.05)x10M. We find no evolution in dust temperature at a constant far-infrared luminosity across z~1.5-4. The gas mass function of our sample increases to z~2-3 and then declines at z>3. The space density and masses of SMGs suggest that almost all galaxies with >~3x10M have passed through an SMG-like phase. The redshift distribution is well fit by a model combining evolution of the gas fraction in halos with the growth of halo mass past a threshold of ~6x10M, thus SMGs may represent the highly efficient collapse of gas-rich massive halos. We show that SMGs are broadly consistent with simple homologous systems in the far-infrared, consistent with a centrally illuminated starburst. Our study provides strong support for an evolutionary link between the active, gas-rich SMG population at z>1 and the formation of massive, bulge-dominated galaxies across the history of the Universe.

arXiv comment33 pages, 16 figures, MNRAS accepted version

References in corpus (144)

Cited by in corpus (169)