_version_ 1866910577921622016
author Long, Arianna S.
Casey, Caitlin M.
McKinney, Jed
Zavala, Jorge A.
Akins, Hollis B.
Cooper, Olivia R.
Lambrides, Matthieu Bethermin Erini L.
Franco, Maximilien
Caputi, Karina
Champagne, Jaclyn B.
Man, Allison W. S.
Treister, Ezequiel
Manning, Sinclaire M.
Sanders, David B.
Talia, Margherita
Aravena, Manuel
Clements, D. L.
da Cunha, Elisabete
Faisst, Andreas L.
Gentile, Fabrizio
Hodge, Jacqueline
Brammer, Gabriel
Brusa, Marcella
Finkelstein, Steven L.
Fujimoto, Seiji
Hayward, Christopher C.
Ilbert, Olivier
Jolly, Jean-Baptiste
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Knudsen, Kirsten
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
Magdis, Georgios
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Scoville, Nick
Sheth, Kartik
Smolcic, Vernesa
Spilker, Justin
Taniguchi, Yoshiaki
Toft, Sune
Urry, C. Megan
Yun, Min
author_facet Long, Arianna S.
Casey, Caitlin M.
McKinney, Jed
Zavala, Jorge A.
Akins, Hollis B.
Cooper, Olivia R.
Lambrides, Matthieu Bethermin Erini L.
Franco, Maximilien
Caputi, Karina
Champagne, Jaclyn B.
Man, Allison W. S.
Treister, Ezequiel
Manning, Sinclaire M.
Sanders, David B.
Talia, Margherita
Aravena, Manuel
Clements, D. L.
da Cunha, Elisabete
Faisst, Andreas L.
Gentile, Fabrizio
Hodge, Jacqueline
Brammer, Gabriel
Brusa, Marcella
Finkelstein, Steven L.
Fujimoto, Seiji
Hayward, Christopher C.
Ilbert, Olivier
Jolly, Jean-Baptiste
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Knudsen, Kirsten
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
Magdis, Georgios
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Scoville, Nick
Sheth, Kartik
Smolcic, Vernesa
Spilker, Justin
Taniguchi, Yoshiaki
Toft, Sune
Urry, C. Megan
Yun, Min
contents One of the greatest challenges in galaxy evolution over the last decade has been constraining the prevalence of heavily dust-obscured galaxies in the early Universe. At $z>3$, these galaxies are increasingly rare, and difficult to identify as they are interspersed among the more numerous dust-obscured galaxy population at $z=1-3$, making efforts to secure confident spectroscopic redshifts expensive, and sometimes unsuccessful. In this work, we present the Extended Mapping Obscuration to Reionization with ALMA (Ex-MORA) Survey -- a 2mm blank-field survey in the COSMOS-Web field, and the largest ever ALMA blank-field survey to-date covering 577 arcmin$^2$. Ex-MORA is an expansion of the MORA survey designed to identify primarily $z>3$ dusty, star-forming galaxies while simultaneously filtering out the more numerous $z<3$ population by leveraging the very negative $K$-correction at observed-frame 2mm. We identify 37 significant ($>$5$σ$) sources, 33 of which are robust thermal dust emitters. We measure a median redshift of $\langle z \rangle = 3.6^{+0.1}_{-0.2}$, with two-thirds of the sample at $z>3$, and just under half at $z>4$, demonstrating the overall success of the 2mm-selection technique. The integrated $z>3$ volume density of Ex-MORA sources is $\sim1-3\times10^{-5}$ Mpc$^{-3}$, consistent with other surveys of infrared luminous galaxies at similar epochs. We also find that techniques using rest-frame optical emission (or lack thereof) to identify $z>3$ heavily dust-obscured galaxies miss at least half of Ex-MORA galaxies. This supports the idea that the dusty galaxy population is heterogeneous, and that synergies across observatories spanning multiple energy regimes are critical to understanding their formation and evolution at $z>3$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_14546
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Extended Mapping Obscuration to Reionization with ALMA (Ex-MORA) Survey: 5$σ$ Source Catalog and Redshift Distribution
Long, Arianna S.
Casey, Caitlin M.
McKinney, Jed
Zavala, Jorge A.
Akins, Hollis B.
Cooper, Olivia R.
Lambrides, Matthieu Bethermin Erini L.
Franco, Maximilien
Caputi, Karina
Champagne, Jaclyn B.
Man, Allison W. S.
Treister, Ezequiel
Manning, Sinclaire M.
Sanders, David B.
Talia, Margherita
Aravena, Manuel
Clements, D. L.
da Cunha, Elisabete
Faisst, Andreas L.
Gentile, Fabrizio
Hodge, Jacqueline
Brammer, Gabriel
Brusa, Marcella
Finkelstein, Steven L.
Fujimoto, Seiji
Hayward, Christopher C.
Ilbert, Olivier
Jolly, Jean-Baptiste
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Knudsen, Kirsten
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
Magdis, Georgios
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Scoville, Nick
Sheth, Kartik
Smolcic, Vernesa
Spilker, Justin
Taniguchi, Yoshiaki
Toft, Sune
Urry, C. Megan
Yun, Min
Astrophysics of Galaxies
One of the greatest challenges in galaxy evolution over the last decade has been constraining the prevalence of heavily dust-obscured galaxies in the early Universe. At $z>3$, these galaxies are increasingly rare, and difficult to identify as they are interspersed among the more numerous dust-obscured galaxy population at $z=1-3$, making efforts to secure confident spectroscopic redshifts expensive, and sometimes unsuccessful. In this work, we present the Extended Mapping Obscuration to Reionization with ALMA (Ex-MORA) Survey -- a 2mm blank-field survey in the COSMOS-Web field, and the largest ever ALMA blank-field survey to-date covering 577 arcmin$^2$. Ex-MORA is an expansion of the MORA survey designed to identify primarily $z>3$ dusty, star-forming galaxies while simultaneously filtering out the more numerous $z<3$ population by leveraging the very negative $K$-correction at observed-frame 2mm. We identify 37 significant ($>$5$σ$) sources, 33 of which are robust thermal dust emitters. We measure a median redshift of $\langle z \rangle = 3.6^{+0.1}_{-0.2}$, with two-thirds of the sample at $z>3$, and just under half at $z>4$, demonstrating the overall success of the 2mm-selection technique. The integrated $z>3$ volume density of Ex-MORA sources is $\sim1-3\times10^{-5}$ Mpc$^{-3}$, consistent with other surveys of infrared luminous galaxies at similar epochs. We also find that techniques using rest-frame optical emission (or lack thereof) to identify $z>3$ heavily dust-obscured galaxies miss at least half of Ex-MORA galaxies. This supports the idea that the dusty galaxy population is heterogeneous, and that synergies across observatories spanning multiple energy regimes are critical to understanding their formation and evolution at $z>3$.
title The Extended Mapping Obscuration to Reionization with ALMA (Ex-MORA) Survey: 5$σ$ Source Catalog and Redshift Distribution
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14546