Submillimetre observations of WISE-selected high-redshift, luminous, dusty galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses submillimetre observations to analyze WISE-selected high-redshift, luminous dusty galaxies, revealing their unique spectral energy distributions and environmental overdensities, and providing insights into their dust properties and AGN activity.

Contribution

First submillimetre study of WISE-selected Hot DOGs, showing their distinct dust emission and environmental overdensities, and challenging standard AGN SED models.

Findings

Hot DOGs have extremely high infrared luminosities (>10^13 L_sun).

They exhibit very blue mid-infrared to submm SEDs not fitting standard AGN templates.

Significant overdensity of serendipitous submm galaxies around Hot DOGs.

Abstract

We present SCUBA-2 850um submillimetre (submm) observations of the fields of 10 dusty, luminous galaxies at z ~ 1.7 - 4.6, detected at 12um and/or 22um by the WISE all-sky survey, but faint or undetected at 3.4um and 4.6um; dubbed hot, dust-obscured galaxies (Hot DOGs). The six detected targets all have total infrared luminosities greater than 10^13 L_sun, with one greater than 10^14 L_sun. Their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are very blue from mid-infrared to submm wavelengths and not well fitted by standard AGN SED templates, without adding extra dust extinction to fit the WISE 3.4um and 4.6um data. The SCUBA-2 850um observations confirm that the Hot DOGs have less cold and/or more warm dust emission than standard AGN templates, and limit an underlying extended spiral or ULIRG-type galaxy to contribute less than about 2% or 55% of the typical total Hot DOG IR luminosity, respectively. The two most distant and luminous targets have similar observed submm to mid-infrared ratios to the rest, and thus appear to have even hotter SEDs. The number of serendipitous submm galaxies (SMGs) detected in the 1.5-arcmin-radius SCUBA-2 850um maps indicates there is a significant over-density of serendipitous sources around Hot DOGs. These submm observations confirm that the WISE-selected ultra-luminous galaxies have very blue mid-infrared to submm SEDs, suggesting that they contain very powerful AGN, and are apparently located in unusual arcmin-scale overdensities of very luminous dusty galaxies.