An ALMA survey of submillimetre galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: an unbiased study of SMG environments measured with narrowband imaging

TL;DR

This study investigates the environments of submillimetre galaxies at high redshift using narrowband imaging, revealing that SMGs inhabit a range of environments from overdense protoclusters to blank fields, challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

It provides the first unbiased environmental analysis of spectroscopically-confirmed SMGs at high redshift using narrowband imaging, showing diverse galaxy surroundings.

Findings

One SMG resides in a significant overdensity of emission-line sources.

Another SMG is in a mildly overdense environment on smaller scales.

The third SMG appears in a typical field environment.

Abstract

Submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) are some of the most extreme star-forming systems in the Universe, whose place in the framework of galaxy evolution is as yet uncertain. It has been hypothesised that SMGs are progenitors of local early-type galaxies, requiring that SMGs generally reside in galaxy cluster progenitors at high redshift. We test this hypothesis and explore SMG environments using a narrowband VLT/HAWK-I+GRAAL study of H$\alpha$ and [OIII] emitters around an unbiased sample of three ALMA-identified and spectroscopically-confirmed SMGs at $z \sim 2.3$ and $z \sim 3.3$, where these SMGs were selected solely on spectroscopic redshift. Comparing with blank-field observations at similar epochs, we find that one of the three SMGs lies in an overdensity of emission-line sources on the $\sim4$ Mpc scale of the HAWK-I field of view, with overdensity parameter $\delta_{g} = 2.6^{+1.4}_{-1.2}$. A second SMG is significantly overdense only on $\lesssim 1.6$ Mpc scales and the final SMG is consistent with residing in a blank field environment. The total masses of the two overdensities are estimated to be $\log(M_{h}/{\rm M}_{\odot}) =$12.1--14.4, leading to present-day masses of $\log(M_{h,z=0}/{\rm M}_{\odot}) =$12.9--15.9. These results imply that SMGs occupy a range of environments, from overdense protoclusters or protogroups to the blank field, suggesting that while some SMGs are strong candidates for the progenitors of massive elliptical galaxies in clusters, this may not be their only possible evolutionary pathway.