Molecular Lines as Diagnostics of High Redshift Objects

Abstract

Models are presented for CO rotational line emission by high redshift starburst galaxies. The influence of the cosmic microwave background on the thermal balance and the level populations of atomic and molecular species is explicitly included. Predictions are made for the observability of starburst galaxies through line and continuum emission between z=5 and z=30. It is found that the Millimeter Array could detect a starburst galaxy with ~10^5 Orion regions, corresponding to a star formation rate of about 30 Mo yr^{-1}, equally well at z=5 or z=30 due to the increasing cosmic microwave background temperature with redshift. Line emission is a potentially more powerful probe than dust continuum emission of very high redshift objects.

15 pages LaTex, uses aasms4.sty, Accepted by ApJL

References in corpus (2)

• Molecular gas and dust around a radio-quiet quasar at redshift 4.7
• Star Formation and Metal Production as a Function of Redshift: The Role of the Multi-Phase ISM

Cited by in corpus (18)

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• The Role of Galactic Winds on Molecular Gas Emission from Galaxy Mergers
• Carbon monoxide line emission as a CMB foreground: tomography of the star-forming universe with different spectral resolutions
• The Formation of the First Massive Black Holes
• Prediction of the Cosmic Evolution of the CO-Luminosity Functions
• Millimetre/submillimetre-wave emission line searches for high-redshift galaxies
• Detecting the First Objects in the Mid-IR with NGST
• Observing the First Stars and Black Holes
• The Formation and Evolution of the First Massive Black Holes
• Centimeter searches for molecular line emission from high-redshift galaxies
• CO line emission from Lyman Break Galaxies. Cosmological simulations and predictions for ALMA
• Millimetre Science with the Upgraded Australia Telescope
• Effective Star Formation Rates for Cosmological Applications
• Gas and Dust in Protogalaxies