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Flat Rotation Curves Found in Merging Dusty Starbursts at z = 2.3 through Tilted-ring Modeling
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Flat Rotation Curves Found in Merging Dusty Starbursts at z = 2.3 through Tilted-ring Modeling

Rui Xue, Hai Fu, Jacob Isbell, R. J Ivison, Asantha Cooray and Iván Oteo
Astrophysical journal. Letters, Vol.864(1), p.L11
08/29/2018
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aad9a9
url
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aad9a9View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

The brightest 500 m source in the XMM-LSS field, HXMM01, is a rare merger of luminous starburst galaxies at z = 2.3 with a dust-obscured star formation rate of 2000 M yr−1. Here we present high-resolution spectroscopic observations of HXMM01 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). We detect line emission from CO J = 7 → 6, [C i] 3P2 → 3P1, and p-H2O 211 → 202 and continuum emission at 230 GHz. At a spatial resolution of 0 2 and a spectral resolution of 40 km s−1, the source is resolved into three distinct components, which are spatially and dynamically associated within a projected radius of 20 kpc and a radial velocity range of 2000 km s−1. For two major components, our Bayesian-based tilted-ring modeling of the ALMA spectral cubes shows almost flat rotation curves peaking at ∼500 km s−1 at galactocentric distances between 2 and 5 kpc. Each of them has a dynamical mass of ∼1011 M . The combination of the dynamical masses and the archival CO J = 1 → 0 data places strong upper limits on the CO → H2 conversion factor of CO 1.4-2.0 M (K km s−1 pc2)−1. These limits are significantly below the Galactic inner disk CO value of 4.3 M (K km s−1 pc2)−1 but are consistent with those of local starbursts. Therefore, the previously estimated short gas depletion timescale of ∼200 Myr remains unchanged.
galaxies: formation galaxies: high-redshift galaxies: individual (HerMES J022016.5−060143) galaxies: interactions

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