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We present a comprehensive study of the molecular gas properties of 17 Type 2 quasars at z < 0.2 from the Quasar Feedback Survey (L$_{\rm [O~{\small III}]}$ > 1042.1 $\rm ergs^{-1}$), selected by their high [O iii] luminosities and displaying a large diversity of radio jet properties, but dominated by LIRG-like galaxies. With these data, we are able to investigate the impact of AGN and AGN feedback mechanisms on the global molecular interstellar medium. Using Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment and ALMA ACA observations, we measure the total molecular gas content using the CO(1-0) emission and homogeneously sample the carbon monoxide (CO) spectral line energy distributions, observing CO transitions (Jup  = 1, 2, 3, 6, 7). We observe high r21 ratios (r21  = L’CO(2-1)/L’CO(1-0)) with a median r21  = 1.06, similar to local (U)LIRGs (with r21 ∼ 1) and higher than normal star-forming galaxies (with r21 ∼ 0.65). Despite the high r21 values, for the seven targets with the required data, we find low excitation in CO(6-5) & CO(7-6) (r61 and r62 < 0.6 in all but one target), unlike high-redshift quasars in the literature, which are far more luminous and show higher line ratios. The ionized gas traced by [O iii] exhibits systematically higher velocities than the molecular gas traced by CO. We conclude that any effects of quasar feedback (e.g. via outflows and radio jets) do not have a significant instantaneous impact on the global molecular gas content and excitation and we suggest that it only occurs on more localized scales.

 

This paper presents the results of 475h of interferometric observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array towards the Spiderweb protocluster at z=2.16. We search for large, extended molecular gas reservoirs among 46 previously detected CO(1−0) emitters, employing a customised method we developed. Based on the CO emission images and position–velocity diagrams, as well as the ranking of sources using a binary weighting of six different criteria, we have identified 14 robust and 7 tentative candidates that exhibit large extended molecular gas reservoirs. These extended reservoirs are defined as having sizes greater than 40 kpc or supergalactic scale. This result suggests a high frequency of extended gas reservoirs, comprising at least 30 percent of our CO-selected sample. An environmental study of the candidates is carried out based on Nth nearest neighbour and we find that the large molecular gas reservoirs tend to exist in denser regions. The spatial distribution of our candidates is mainly centred on the core region of the Spiderweb protocluster. The performance and adaptability of our method are discussed. We found 13 (potentially) extended gas reservoirs located in eight galaxy (proto)clusters from the literature. We noticed that large extended molecular gas reservoirs surrounding (normal) star-forming galaxies in protoclusters are rare. This may be attributable to the lack of observations low-J CO transitions and the lack of quantitative analyses of molecular gas morphologies. The large gas reservoirs in the Spiderweb protocluster are potential sources of the intracluster medium seen in low redshift Virgo- or Coma-like galaxy clusters.

 

High-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies with very high star formation rates (500−3000 M ⊙ yr −1 ) are key to understanding the formation of the most extreme galaxies in the early Universe. Characterising the gas reservoir of these systems can reveal the driving factor behind the high star formation. Using molecular gas tracers such as, high- J CO lines, neutral carbon lines, and the dust continuum, we can estimate the gas density and radiation field intensity in their interstellar media. In this paper, we present high resolution (∼0.4″) observations of CO(7−6), [CI](2−1), and dust continuum of three lensed galaxies from the South pole telescope – sub-millimetre galaxies (SPT-SMG) sample at z  ∼ 3 with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array. Our sources have high intrinsic star formation rates (> 850 M ⊙ yr −1 ) and rather short depletion timescales (< 100 Myr). Based on the L [CI](2−1) / L CO(7 − 6) and L [CI](2−1) / L IR ratios, our galaxy sample has similar radiation field intensities and gas densities compared to other submillimetre galaxies. We performed visibility-based lens modelling on these objects to reconstruct the kinematics in the source plane. We find that the cold gas masses of the sources are compatible with simple dynamical mass estimates using ULIRG-like values of the CO-H 2 conversion factor α CO , but not Milky Way-like values. We find diverse source kinematics in our sample: SPT0103−45 and SPT2147−50 are likely rotating disks, while SPT2357−51 is possibly a major merger. The analysis presented in the paper could be extended to a larger sample to determine better statistics of morphologies and interstellar medium properties of high- z dusty star-forming galaxies. 

ABSTRACT We present Gemini-S and Spitzer-IRAC optical-through-near-IR observations in the field of the SPT2349-56 proto-cluster at z = 4.3. We detect optical/IR counterparts for only 9 of the 14 submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) previously identified by ALMA in the core of SPT2349-56. In addition, we detect four z ∼ 4 Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) in the 30 arcsec-diameter region surrounding this proto-cluster core. Three of the four LBGs are new systems, while one appears to be a counterpart of one of the nine observed SMGs. We identify a candidate brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) with a stellar mass of $(3.2^{+2.3}_{-1.4})\times 10^{11}$ M⊙. The stellar masses of the eight other SMGs place them on, above, and below the main sequence of star formation at z ≈ 4.5. The cumulative stellar mass for the SPT2349-56 core is at least (12.2 ± 2.8) × 1011 M⊙, a sizeable fraction of the stellar mass in local BCGs, and close to the universal baryon fraction (0.19) relative to the virial mass of the core (1013 M⊙). As all 14 of these SMGs are destined to quickly merge, we conclude that the proto-cluster core has already developed a significant stellar mass at this early stage, comparable to z = 1 BCGs. Importantly, we also find that the SPT2349-56 core structure would be difficult to uncover in optical surveys, with none of the ALMA sources being easily identifiable or constrained through g, r, and i colour selection in deep optical surveys and only a modest overdensity of LBGs over the more extended structure. SPT2349-56 therefore represents a truly dust-obscured phase of a massive cluster core under formation. 

ABSTRACT We present Atacama Compact Array and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment observations of the [N ii] 205 μm fine-structure line in 40 sub-millimetre galaxies lying at redshifts z = 3–6, drawn from the 2500 deg2 South Pole Telescope survey. This represents the largest uniformly selected sample of high-redshift [N ii] 205 μm measurements to date. 29 sources also have [C ii] 158 μm line observations allowing a characterization of the distribution of the [C ii] to [N ii] luminosity ratio for the first time at high redshift. The sample exhibits a median L$_{{\rm{[C\,{\small II}]}}}$/L$_{{\rm{[N\,{\small II}]}}}$ ≈ 11.0 and interquartile range of 5.0 –24.7. These ratios are similar to those observed in local (Ultra)luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs), possibly indicating similarities in their interstellar medium. At the extremes, we find individual sub-millimetre galaxies with L$_{{\rm{[C\,{\small II}]}}}$/L$_{{\rm{[N\,{\small II}]}}}$ low enough to suggest a smaller contribution from neutral gas than ionized gas to the [C ii] flux and high enough to suggest strongly photon or X-ray region dominated flux. These results highlight a large range in this line luminosity ratio for sub-millimetre galaxies, which may be caused by variations in gas density, the relative abundances of carbon and nitrogen, ionization parameter, metallicity, and a variation in the fractional abundance of ionized and neutral interstellar medium.