Resolved Spectroscopy of Gravitationally-Lensed Galaxies: Recovering Coherent Velocity Fields in Sub-Luminous z~2-3 Galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses gravitational lensing and adaptive optics to achieve high-resolution spectroscopy of z~2-3 galaxies, revealing coherent rotation, giant star-forming regions, and insights into early galaxy dynamics and star formation processes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that high-resolution integral field spectroscopy can recover detailed velocity fields and star-forming structures in distant galaxies, confirming disk-like dynamics at high redshift.

Findings

Four of six galaxies show coherent rotating disk velocity fields.

Detected giant star-forming HII regions 300 pc - 1 kpc in size.

Star formation density is ~100 times higher than in local spirals.

Abstract

We present spatially-resolved dynamics for six strongly lensed star-forming galaxies at z=1.7-3.1, each enlarged by a linear magnification factor ~8. Using the Keck laser guide star AO system and the OSIRIS integral field unit spectrograph we resolve kinematic and morphological detail in our sample with an unprecedented fidelity, in some cases achieving spatial resolutions of ~100 pc. With one exception our sources have diameters ranging from 1-7 kpc, star formation rates of 2-40 Msun/yr (uncorrected for extinction) and dynamical masses of 10^(9.7-10.3) Msun. With this exquisite resolution we find that four of the six galaxies display coherent velocity fields consistent with a simple rotating disk model, which can only be recovered with the considerably improved spatial resolution and sampling from the combination of adaptive optics and strong gravitational lensing. Our model fits imply ratios for the systemic to random motion, V sin(i)/sigma, ranging from 0.5-1.3 and Toomre disk parameters Q<1. The large fraction of well-ordered velocity fields in our sample is consistent with data analyzed for larger, more luminous sources at this redshift. Our high resolution data further reveal that all six galaxies contain multiple giant star-forming HII regions whose resolved diameters are in the range 300 pc - 1.0 kpc, consistent with the Jeans length expected in the case of dispersion support. The density of star formation in these regions is ~100 times higher than observed in local spirals; such high values are only seen in the most luminous local starbursts. The global dynamics and demographics of star formation in these HII regions suggest that vigorous star formation is primarily governed by gravitational instability in primitive rotating disks.