The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies and Active Galactic Nuclei in the Southern Survey

TL;DR

This paper presents a catalog of 191 extragalactic sources detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, classifying them into AGN and dusty star-forming galaxies, and analyzing their spectral properties and counterparts.

Contribution

First catalog of ACT-detected extragalactic sources at 148 and 218 GHz, with spectral analysis and cross-identification with existing surveys, revealing new dusty galaxy populations.

Findings

Synchrotron sources show spectral steepening from 20 to 218 GHz.

Dusty galaxies have median spectral index of 3.7 and include high-redshift sources.

Unmatched dusty sources may be lensed galaxies or new subpopulations.

Abstract

We present a catalog of 191 extragalactic sources detected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 148 GHz and/or 218 GHz in the 2008 Southern survey. Flux densities span 14-1700 mJy, and we use source spectral indices derived using ACT-only data to divide our sources into two sub-populations: 167 radio galaxies powered by central active galactic nuclei (AGN), and 24 dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). We cross-identify 97% of our sources (166 of the AGN and 19 of the DSFGs) with those in currently available catalogs. When combined with flux densities from the Australian Telescope 20 GHz survey and follow-up observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the synchrotron-dominated population is seen to exhibit a steepening of the slope of the spectral energy distribution from 20 to 148 GHz, with the trend continuing to 218 GHz. The ACT dust-dominated source population has a median spectral index of 3.7+0.62-0.86, and includes both local galaxies and sources with redshifts as great as 5.6. Dusty sources with no counterpart in existing catalogs likely belong to a recently discovered subpopulation of DSFGs lensed by foreground galaxies or galaxy groups.