Hiding behind a curtain of dust: Gas and dust properties of an ultra-luminous strongly-lensed z = 3.75 galaxy behind the Milky Way disk

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of J154506, a strongly lensed submillimeter galaxy behind the Lupus-I molecular cloud, and characterisation of its physical properties using a combination of new and archival data, including VLT/MUSE and FORS2 optical data. We identify two high-significance (SNR>5) emission lines at 97.0 and 145.5 GHz, corresponding to CO(4-3) and CO(6-5), respectively, in the spectral scans from the Atacama Compact Array and the Large Millimetre Telescope and the [CII] 158~$\mu$m fine-structure line at 400~GHz using the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. These detections yield a spectroscopic redshift of $z_{\mathrm{spec}}=3.7515\pm 0.0005$. We also report the detection of [CI], HCN(4-3), and two H${}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{+}$ transitions, further confirming the redshift and providing insights into J154506's physical properties. By modeling sub-arcsecond resolution (0.75) ALMA Band 6 and 7 continuum data in the uv-plane, we derive an average magnification factor of $6.0\pm 0.4$ and our analysis reveals a relatively cold dust (38K) in a starburst ($\sim 900{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }\mathrm{y}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$) galaxy with a high intrinsic dust mass ($\sim 2.5\times 10^9{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$) and infrared (IR) luminosity ($\sim 6\times 10^{12}{\mathrm{L}}_{\odot }$). The non-local thermodynamic equilibrium radiative transfer modelling of the joint dust SED and CO line excitation suggests the dust continuum emission is primarily associated with relatively diffuse regions with molecular gas densities of $10^2-10^4{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}$, rather than compact, high-pressure environments typical of extreme starbursts or AGNs. This is supported by the close-to-unity ratio between the dust and gas kinetic temperatures, which argues against highly energetic heating mechanisms. The CO excitation ladder peaks close to CO(5-4) and is dominated by slightly denser molecular gas.

18 pages, 13 figures

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