A non-corotating gas component in an extreme starburst at z = 4.3

Also available in: Español (Spanish) Euskara (Basque)

Tadaki, Ken-ichi; Iono, Daisuke; Yun, Min S.; Aretxaga, Itziar; Hatsukade, Bunyo;  Lee, Minju M.; Michiyama, Tomonari; Nakanishi, Kouichiro; Saito, Toshiki; Ueda, Junko; Umehata, Hideki

Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal (arXiv: 2001.04638v1)

We report the detection of a non-corotating gas component in a bright unlensed submillimeter galaxy at z=4.3, COSMOS-AzTEC-1, hosting a compact starburst. ALMA 0.17 and 0.09 arcsec resolution observations of [CII] emission clearly demonstrate that the gas kinematics is characterized by an ordered rotation. After subtracting the best-fit model of a rotating disk, we kinematically identify two residual components in the channel maps. Both observing simulations and analysis of dirty images confirm that these two subcomponents are not artificially created by noise fluctuations and beam deconvolution. One of the two has a velocity offset of 200 km/s and a physical separation of 2 kpc from the primary disk and is located along the kinematic minor axis of disk rotation. We conclude that this gas component is falling into the galaxy from a direction perpendicular to the disk rotation. The accretion of such small non-corotating gas components could stimulate violent disk instability, driving radial gas inflows into the center of galaxies and leading to formation of in-situ clumps such as identified in dust continuum and CO. We require more theoretical studies on high gas fraction mergers with mass ratio of 1:>10 to verify this process.

• [EN] An explanation of this paper for the general public can be found in the post “what causes the extreme virulence of star formation in AzTEC1?”
• [ES] La explicación a todo público de este artículo se encuentra en la entrada “¿qué provoca la extrema virulencia de formación estelar de AzTEC1?”
• [EU] Publiko orokorrarentzako azalpena post honetan: “Zerk eragiten du AzTEC1aren muturreko izar-eraketaren birulentzia?”