Dust continuum, CO, and [C I] 1-0 lines: self-consistent H2 mass estimates and the possibility of globally CO-dark galaxies at $z = 0.35$

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations of 12 galaxies at z=0.35 to measure their dust, CO, and [CI] emissions, revealing diverse ISM properties and challenging existing models of molecular gas in star-forming galaxies.

Contribution

First simultaneous measurement of dust, CO, and [CI] lines in a complete galaxy sample, providing new insights into molecular gas tracers and ISM conditions at intermediate redshift.

Findings

Discovery of high [CI]/CO ratios in some galaxies.

Determination of average CO-H2 conversion factor and carbon abundance.

Evidence of diverse galaxy morphologies and interactions.

Abstract

We present ALMA observations of a small but statistically complete sample of twelve 250 micron selected galaxies at $z=0.35$ designed to measure their dust submillimeter continuum emission as well as their CO(1-0) and atomic carbon [CI](3P1-3P0) spectral lines. This is the first sample of galaxies with global measures of all three $H_2$-mass tracers and which show star formation rates (4-26 Msun yr$^{-1}$) and infra-red luminosities ($1-6\times10^{11}$ Lsun) typical of star forming galaxies in their era. We find a surprising diversity of morphology and kinematic structure; one-third of the sample have evidence for interaction with nearby smaller galaxies, several sources have disjoint dust and gas morphology. Moreover two galaxies have very high $L_{CI}/L_{CO}$ ratios for their global molecular gas reservoirs; if confirmed, such extreme intensity ratios in a sample of dust selected, massive star forming galaxies presents a challenge to our understanding of ISM. Finally, we use the emission of the three molecular gas tracers, to determine the carbon abundance, $X_{ci}$, and CO-$\rm{H_2}$ conversion $\alpha_{co}$ in our sample, using a weak prior that the gas-to-dust ratio is similar to that of the Milky Way for these massive and metal rich galaxies. Using a likelihood method which simultaneously uses all three gas tracer measurements, we find mean values and errors on the mean of $\alpha_{co}=3.0\pm0.5\,\rm{Msun\,(K\,kms^{-1}\,pc^2)^{-1}}$ and $X_{ci}=1.6\pm0.1\times 10^{-5}$ (or $\alpha_{ci}=18.8\,K kms^{-1}\,pc^2 (Msun)^{-1}$) and $\delta_{GDR}=128\pm16$ (or $\alpha_{850}=5.9\times10^{12}\,\rm{W\,Hz^{-1}\, Msun^{-1}}$), where our starting assumption is that these metal rich galaxies have an average gas-to-dust ratio similar to that of the Milky Way centered on $\delta_{GDR}=135$.