The Einstein ring GAL-CLUS-022058s: a Lensed Ultrabright Submillimeter Galaxy at z=1.4796

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and detailed analysis of a highly magnified, ultrabright submillimeter galaxy at redshift 1.4796, using multi-wavelength observations and gravitational lens modeling to determine its properties and star formation activity.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed characterization of a lensed ultrabright submillimeter galaxy at z~1.5, combining lens modeling, spectroscopic confirmation, and physical property estimation.

Findings

Magnification factor of approximately 18 from lens modeling.

Intrinsic infrared luminosity around 10^12 L_sun indicating intense star formation.

Molecular gas mass estimated at 2.6 x 10^10 M_sun, with a gas fraction of 0.34.

Abstract

We report an ultra-bright lensed submillimeter galaxy at $z_{spec}=1.4796$, identified as a result of a full-sky cross-correlation of the AllWISE and Planck compact source catalogs aimed to search for bright submillimeter galaxies at $z \sim 1.5-2.8$. APEX/LABOCA observations of the candidate galaxy reveal a source with flux (S$_{870 \mu m}= 54\pm 8$ mJy). The position of the APEX source coincides with the position of the AllWISE mid-IR source, and with the Einstein ring GAL-CLUS-022058s, observed with the HST. Archival VLT/FORS observations reveal the redshift of this Einstein ring, $z_{spec}=1.4796$, and detection of the CO(5-4) line at $z_{spec} = 1.4802$ with APEX/nFLASH230 confirms the redshift of the submillimeter emission. The lensed source appears to be gravitationally magnified by a massive foreground galaxy cluster lens at $z = 0.36$. We use Lenstool to model the gravitational lensing, which is near to a "fold arc" configuration for an elliptical mass distribution of the central halo, where four images of the lensed galaxy are seen; the mean magnification is $\mu_{\rm L} =18\pm 4$. We have determined an intrinsic rest-frame infrared luminosity of $L_{IR} \approx 10^{12} L_\odot $ and a likely star formation rate of $\sim 70-170$ $M_\odot\ yr^{-1}$. The molecular gas mass is $M_{mol} \sim 2.6 \times 10^{10} M_\odot$ and the gas fraction is $f = 0.34\pm 0.07$. We also obtain a stellar mass log$(M_\ast/M_\odot) = 10.7 \pm 0.1$ and a specific star formation rate log$(sSFR/Gyr^{-1})=0.15 \pm 0.03$. This galaxy lies on the so-called main sequence of star-forming galaxies at this redshift.