The nature of the [CII] emission in dusty star-forming galaxies from the SPT-survey
Authors: Bitten Gullberg (ESO), Carlos De Breuck (ESO), Joaquin Vieira (Illinois), Axel Weiss (MPIfR), James Aguirre (University of Pennsylvania), Manuel Aravena (Universidad Diego Portales), Matthieu Béthermin (ESO), C. Matt Bradford (JPL), Matt Bothwell (Cambridge), John Carlstrom (Chicago), Scott Chapman (Dalhousie), Chris Fassnacht (Davis), Anthony Gonzalez (Florida), Thomas Greve (UCL), Yashar Hezavah (Stanford), William L. Holtzapfel (Berkeley), Kate Husband (Bristol), Jingzhe Ma (Florida), Matt Malkan (UCLA), Dan Marrone (Arizona), Karl Menten (MPIfR), Eric Murphy (IPAC), Chris Reichardt (Berkeley), Justin Spilker (Arizona), Anthony Stark (CfA), Maria Strandet (MPIfR), Niraj Welikala (Oxford)
Abstract: We present [CII] observations of 20 strongly lensed dusty star forming galaxies at 2.1 < z < 5.7 using APEX and Herschel. The sources were selected on their 1.4 mm flux (S_1.4mm > 20 mJy) from the South Pole Telescope survey, with far-infrared (FIR) luminosities determined from extensive photometric data. The [CII] line is robustly detected in 17 sources, all but one being spectrally resolved. Eleven out of 20 sources observed in [CII] also have low-J CO detections from ATCA. A comparison with mid- and high-J CO lines from ALMA reveals consistent [CII] and CO velocity profiles, suggesting that there is little differential lensing between these species. The [CII], low-J CO and FIR data allow us to constrain the properties of the interstellar medium. We find [CII] to CO(1-0) luminosity ratios in the SPT sample of 5200 +- 1800, with significantly less scatter than in other samples. This line ratio can be best described by a medium of [CII] and CO emitting gas with a higher [CII] than CO excitation temperature, high CO optical depth tau_CO >> 1, and low to moderate [CII] optical depth tau_CII ~< 1. The geometric structure of photodissociation regions allows for such conditions.
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