A Study of CO Emission in High Redshift QSOs Using the Owens Valley Millimeter Array

Abstract

Searches for CO emission in high-redshift objects have traditionally suffered from the accuracy of optically-derived redshifts due to lack of bandwidth in correlators at radio observatories. This problem has motivated the creation of the new COBRA continuum correlator, with 4 GHz available bandwidth, at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Millimeter Array. Presented here are the first scientific results from COBRA. We report detections of redshifted CO(J=3-2) emission in the QSOs SMM J04135+10277 and VCV J140955.5+562827, as well as a probable detection in RX J0911.4+0551. At redshifts of z=2.846, z=2.585, and z=2.796, we find integrated CO flux densities of 5.4 Jy km/s, 2.4 Jy km/s, and 2.9 Jy km/s for SMM J04135+10277, VCV J140955.5+562827, and RX J0911.4+0551, respectively, over linewidths of Delta(V_{FWHM}) ~ 350 km/s. These measurements, when corrected for gravitational lensing, correspond to molecular gas masses of order M(H_2) ~ 10^{9.6-11.1} solar masses, and are consistent with previous CO observations of high-redshift QSOs. We also report 3-sigma upper limits on CO(3-2) emission in the QSO LBQS 0018-0220 of 1.3 Jy km/s. We do not detect significant 3mm continuum emission from any of the QSOs, with the exception of a tentative (3-sigma) detection in RX J0911.4+0551 of S_{3mm}=0.92 mJy/beam.

arXiv comment18 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, accepted to ApJ. Changes made for version 2: citations added, 2 objects added to Table 2 and Figure 5

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