Large molecular and dust reservoir of a gravitationally-lensed submillimeter galaxy behind the Lupus-I molecular cloud

TL;DR

This study discovers a highly magnified, dust-rich, star-forming galaxy at redshift 3.75 behind the Lupus-I cloud, revealing a large molecular and dust reservoir in the early universe.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed molecular and dust mass measurements of a strongly-lensed galaxy at z~3.75 using multi-telescope observations.

Findings

The galaxy has a molecular mass of about 10^11.5 solar masses.

The dust mass is approximately 10^9.4 solar masses.

The dust-to-gas ratio is high (~0.0083), indicating a chemically enriched interstellar medium.

Abstract

We report the Australian Telescope Compact Array and Nobeyama 45 m telescope detection of a remarkably bright $S_\mathrm{1.1mm}$ = 44 mJy) submillimeter galaxy MM J154506.4-344318 in emission lines at 48.5 and 97.0 GHz, respectively. We also identify part of an emission line at $\approx$ 218.3 GHz using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Together with photometric redshift estimates and the ratio between the line and infrared luminosities, we conclude that the emission lines are most likely to be the $J$ = 2-1, 4-3, and 9-8 transitions of $^{12}$CO at redshift $z = 3.753 \pm 0.001$. ALMA 1.3 mm continuum imaging reveals an arc and a spot separated by an angular distance of 1.6 arcsec, indicative of a strongly-lensed dusty star-forming galaxy with respective molecular and dust masses of $\log{M_{\rm mol}/M_\odot} \approx 11.5$ and $\log{M_{\rm dust}/M_\odot} \approx 9.4$ after corrected for $\approx$ 6.6$\times$ gravitational magnification. The inferred dust-to-gas mass ratio is found to be high ($\approx$ 0.0083) among coeval dusty star-forming galaxies, implying the presence of a massive, chemically-enriched reservoir of cool interstellar medium at $z \approx 4$ or 1.6 Gyr after the Big Bang.