JWST Spectroscopic Census of ALMA Faint Submillimeter Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

TL;DR

This study uses JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy to analyze faint submillimeter galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, revealing their dominant obscured AGN nature, high metallicities, and typical high-redshift galaxy properties.

Contribution

First comprehensive JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopic census of faint ALMA-detected SMGs, providing insights into their AGN activity, metallicity, and relation to general high-redshift galaxy populations.

Findings

Most SMGs are classified as AGNs, with an AGN fraction of about 80% for massive ones.

SMGs exhibit high metallicities, exceeding dust-growth critical metallicity, explaining their dusty nature.

SMGs are consistent with the mass-metallicity relation and star-formation main sequence of high-redshift galaxies.

Abstract

We present a JWST/NIRSpec rest-frame optical spectroscopic census of ALMA 1-mm continuum sources in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) identified by the deep ALMA UDF and ASPECS programs. Our sample is composed of the ALMA flux-limited ($S_{1\,\mathrm{mm}}\gtrsim 0.1\,\mathrm{mJy}$) sources observed with medium-resolution NIRSpec spectroscopy from JADES and SMILES, 16 faint submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) at spectroscopic redshifts of $z\sim 1$-$4$. These SMGs show bright longer-wavelength optical lines (H$\alpha$, [N II]$\lambda\lambda6548,6583$, and [S II]$\lambda\lambda6717,6731$) and faint shorter-wavelength optical lines (H$\beta$ and [O III]$\lambda\lambda4959,5007$) with a large nebular attenuation, $E(B-V)\sim0.3$-$1.8$. We test the SMGs using BPT diagnostics and Chandra X-ray fluxes, and find that most SMGs are classified as AGNs; the AGN fraction is $\sim80\%$ for the SMGs at $M_*>10^{10.5} M_\odot$. We find only one SMG ($<10\%$) with a broad Balmer line, indicating that the SMGs are predominantly obscured AGNs. With the optical lines, we estimate the metallicities of the SMGs to be moderately high, $\sim0.4$-$2 Z_\odot$, exceeding the model-predicted dust-growth critical metallicity ($\sim0.1$-$0.2Z_\odot$), which naturally explains the dusty nature of the SMGs. Interestingly, the SMGs fall in the mass-metallicity relation and the star-formation main sequence, showing no significant differences from other high-$z$ galaxies. Similarly, we find electron densities of $n_e\sim10^2$-$10^3\,\mathrm{cm}^{-3}$ for the SMGs that are comparable with other high-$z$ galaxies. Together with the high SMG fraction ($\sim 100\%$) at the massive end ($M_*>10^{10.5} M_\odot$), these results indicate that the SMGs are mostly not special, but typical massive star-forming galaxies at high redshift.