# ISM properties of a Massive Dusty Star-Forming Galaxy discovered at z ~ 7

## TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and detailed analysis of the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy, SPT0311-58 at z~7, revealing its extreme mass and star formation activity during the early universe.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed ISM properties of a galaxy at this high redshift, using multi-line observations and radiative transfer analysis to constrain gas mass without assumptions.

## Key findings

- Galaxy has an extremely high gas mass of ~3.3 x 10^11 M_sun.
- It exhibits intense star formation, rare at this epoch.
- The ISM properties are constrained through multi-line ALMA, ATCA, and APEX observations.

## Abstract

We report the discovery and constrain the physical conditions of the interstellar medium of the highest-redshift millimeter-selected dusty star-forming galaxy (DSFG) to date, SPT-S J031132-5823.4 (hereafter SPT0311-58), at $z=6.900 +/- 0.002$. SPT0311-58 was discovered via its 1.4mm thermal dust continuum emission in the South Pole Telescope (SPT)-SZ survey. The spectroscopic redshift was determined through an ALMA 3mm frequency scan that detected CO(6-5), CO(7-6) and [CI](2-1), and subsequently confirmed by detections of CO(3-2) with ATCA and [CII] with APEX. We constrain the properties of the ISM in SPT0311-58 with a radiative transfer analysis of the dust continuum photometry and the CO and [CI] line emission. This allows us to determine the gas content without ad hoc assumptions about gas mass scaling factors. SPT0311-58 is extremely massive, with an intrinsic gas mass of $M_{\rm gas} = 3.3 \pm 1.9 \times10^{11}\,M_{\odot}$. Its large mass and intense star formation is very rare for a source well into the Epoch of Reionization.