ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey: Bright [CII] 158 $\mu$m Lines from a Multiply Imaged Sub-$L^{\star}$ Galaxy at $z=6.0719$

TL;DR

This study reports the detection of bright [CII] 158 μm emission lines from a strongly magnified, multiply-imaged galaxy at redshift 6.07, revealing its ISM structure, rotation, and star formation properties, and constraining the faint-end of the [CII] luminosity function.

Contribution

First detection of spatially resolved [CII] emission in a high-redshift galaxy with strong lensing, linking local and cosmic star formation relations.

Findings

[CII] emission is co-spatial with UV continuum at ~300 pc scale.

The galaxy exhibits rotation-dominated kinematics.

The [CII] luminosity function at z=6 aligns with models and local relations.

Abstract

We present bright [CII] 158 $\mu$m line detections from a strongly magnified and multiply-imaged ($\mu\sim20-160$) sub-$L^{*}$ ($M_{\rm UV}$ = $-19.75^{+0.55}_{-0.44}$) Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) at $z=6.0719\pm0.0004$ from the ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey (ALCS). Emission lines are identified at 268.7 GHz at $\geq$ 8$\sigma$ exactly at positions of two multiple images of the LBG behind the massive galaxy cluster RXCJ0600$-$2007. Our lens models, updated with the latest spectroscopy from VLT/MUSE, indicate that a sub region of the LBG crosses the caustic and is lensed into a long ($\sim6''$) arc with a local magnification of $\mu\sim 160$, for which the [CII] line is also significantly detected. The source-plane reconstruction resolves the interstellar medium (ISM) structure, showing that the [CII] line is co-spatial with the rest-frame UV continuum at the scale of $\sim$300 pc. The [CII] line properties suggest that the LBG is a rotation-dominated system whose velocity gradient explains a slight difference of redshifts between the whole LBG and its sub region. The star formation rate (SFR)-$L_{\rm [CII]}$ relations from the sub to the whole regions of the LBG are consistent with those of local galaxies. We evaluate the lower limit of the faint-end of the [CII] luminosity function at $z=6$, and find that it is consistent with predictions from semi analytical models and from the local SFR-$L_{\rm [CII]}$ relation with a SFR function at $z=6$. These results imply that the local SFR-$L_{\rm [CII]}$ relation is universal for a wide range of scales including the spatially resolved ISM, the whole region of galaxy, and the cosmic scale, even in the epoch of reionization.