Formation of Substructure in Luminous Submillimeter Galaxies (FOSSILS): Evidence of Multiple Pathways to Trigger Starbursts in Luminous Submillimeter Galaxies

Abstract

We present an analysis of rest-frame optical and far-infrared continuum emission in three luminous submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) at $3.0\lesssim z\lesssim 4.5$. The SMGs are spatially resolved down to 400-500 pc (0.05'') resolution by James Webb Space telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations. Despite similarities in their observed far-infrared properties (flux density, infrared luminosity, and effective radius), the three SMGs exhibit heterogeneous morphologies both across wavelengths and among the sources themselves. While two of them (AzTEC-4 and AzTEC-8) show a disk-like structure in optical continuum, AzTEC-1 is dominated by highly concentrated component with the Sersic index of $n=5.4$, where its far-infrared continuum emission is clumpy and less concentrated. AzTEC-4, which is confirmed to be at $z=4.198$, shows a two-arm spiral of dust, but not in the stellar distribution. These three SMGs exemplify that multiple physical mechanisms exist in triggering starbursts in luminous SMGs at high redshift: secular instability in gas disks (AzTEC-4) in addition to possible minor mergers (AzTEC-8), and a combination of the efficient gas supply to the central core induced by a gas-rich major merger and the reformation of cold gas disk (AzTEC-1).

ApJ in press

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