CO (2-1) Line Emission in Redshift 6 Quasar Host Galaxies
Abstract
We report new observations of CO (2-1) line emission toward five z ~ 6 quasars using the Ka-band receiver system on the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA). Strong detections were obtained in two of them, SDSS J092721.82+200123.7 and CFHQS J142952.17+544717.6, and a marginal detection was obtained in another source, SDSS J084035.09+562419.9. Upper limits of the CO (2-1) line emission have been obtained for the other two objects. The CO (2-1) line detection in J0927+2001 together with previous measurements of the CO (6-5) and (5-4) lines reveal important constraints on the CO excitation in the central ~10 kpc region of the quasar host galaxy. The CO (2-1) line emission from J1429+5447 is resolved into two distinct peaks separated by 1."2 (~6.9 kpc), indicating a possible gas-rich, major merging system, and the optical quasar position is consistent with the west peak. This result is in good agreement with the picture in which intense host galaxy star formation is coeval with rapid supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion in the most distant universe. The two EVLA detections are ideal targets for further high-resolution imaging (e.g., with ALMA or EVLA observations) to study the gas distribution, dynamics, and SMBH-bulge-mass relation in these earliest quasar host galaxy systems.
Additional Information
© 2011 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 April 15; accepted 2011 May 16; published 2011 August 29. This work is based on observations carried out with the Expanded Very Large Array (NRAO). The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. We acknowledge support from the Max-Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis 2005. Dominik A. Riechers acknowledges support from NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-51235.01 awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. Michael A. Strauss acknowledges the support of NSF grant Ast-0707266. Facilities: EVLAAttached Files
Published - Wang2011p15921Astrophys_J_Lett.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 25438
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110926-114443848
- Max Planck Society
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- HST-HF-51235.01
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- NAS 5-26555
- NASA
- AST-0707266
- NSF
- Max-Planck-Forschungspreis
- Space Telescope Science Institute
- Created
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2011-09-26Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field