The ALMA View of High-Redshift Galaxy Formation

Abstract

The advent of routine operations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the last decade has led to a revolution in the direct study of the interstellar medium (ISM) in `normal' high-redshift galaxies in the rest-frame far-infrared (FIR). This review summarizes the observational literature on z>6.5 sources observed with ALMA and NOEMA (NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array). The main findings are as follows: Cool gas consistently scales with star-formation in a wide range of galaxy environments, similar to local relations, suggesting fundamental processes of star-formation stay relatively constant over 13 billion years of cosmic time. Significant metal enrichment is present in galaxies just 300-400 million years after the Big Bang. There is a trend to higher obscured fraction of star formation with stellar mass and SFR already in place at z~7, with measurements of the cosmic SFR density showing that >10 percent of the SFR density is obscured at this epoch. The estimated dust masses compared to the stellar mass suggest that rapid dust enrichment occurs, likely from supernova with little dust destruction and/or rapid growth in the ISM, which is in agreement with maximal predictions from models. In individual sources cold disks are already in existence, with their gas disks being more extended and smooth than their observed stellar counterparts.

arXiv commentAnnual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2026, Volume 64 (author version); 45 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables and supplemental text (17 pages, 5 figures, 1 table). The catalog is available at https://github.com/raabowler/hzalmacat

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