2020
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc5b9
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[N ii] Fine-structure Emission at 122 and 205 μm in a Galaxy at z = 2.6: A Globally Dense Star-forming Interstellar Medium

Abstract: We present new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array of the 122-and 205µm fine-structure line emission of singly-ionised nitrogen in a strongly lensed starburst galaxy at z = 2.6. The 122-/205-µm [N II] line ratio is sensitive to electron density, n e , in the ionised interstellar medium, and we use this to measure n e ≈ 300 cm −3 averaged across the galaxy. This is over an order of magnitude higher than the Milky Way average, but comparable to localised Galactic star-forming regi… Show more

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Cited by 9 publications
(10 citation statements)
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References 78 publications
(98 reference statements)
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“…We use Splatalogue (Remijan et al 2007) to identify emission lines in the total spectrum. CO 𝐽 = 5 → 4 at 𝜈 obs = 162.133 GHz is detected at high significance as expected, and exhibits the characteristic double horned profile as other molecular and atomic lines (Geach et al 2015(Geach et al , 2018Harrington et al 2019;Doherty et al 2020), and well-modelled in the source-plane reconstruction by a rotating disc (Geach et al 2018). We also detect a fainter, but sig-nificant, emission feature at 𝜈 obs = 161.072 GHz that is consistent with the redshifted ground state ortho-NH 3 𝐽 𝐾 = 1 0 → 0 0 rotational line at 𝜈 rest = 572.498 GHz (Cazzoli et al 2009, hereafter we refer to the line as NH 3 ).…”
Section: Resultssupporting
confidence: 74%
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“…We use Splatalogue (Remijan et al 2007) to identify emission lines in the total spectrum. CO 𝐽 = 5 → 4 at 𝜈 obs = 162.133 GHz is detected at high significance as expected, and exhibits the characteristic double horned profile as other molecular and atomic lines (Geach et al 2015(Geach et al , 2018Harrington et al 2019;Doherty et al 2020), and well-modelled in the source-plane reconstruction by a rotating disc (Geach et al 2018). We also detect a fainter, but sig-nificant, emission feature at 𝜈 obs = 161.072 GHz that is consistent with the redshifted ground state ortho-NH 3 𝐽 𝐾 = 1 0 → 0 0 rotational line at 𝜈 rest = 572.498 GHz (Cazzoli et al 2009, hereafter we refer to the line as NH 3 ).…”
Section: Resultssupporting
confidence: 74%
“…As can be seen from Figure 1, the scaled CO(5-4) emission is an excellent description of the NH 3 line emission. In turn, the line profile of the integrated, projected CO emission is well modelled by a nearly edge-on rotating disc (when modelled in the source plane and projected into the image plane) and this profile is shared by the majority of detected lines within this system covering a wide range of conditions, from the relatively low density molecular reservoir traced by C (1-0) to the warmer, dense, ionised gas traced by N + (Su et al 2017;Geach et al 2018;Harrington et al 2019;Doherty et al 2020). The striking similarity in the observed line profiles imply that the observed NH 3 emission is broadly co-located with the COemitting gas, likely emanating from discrete sites of on-going star formation scattered throughout the gas-rich disc.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 83%
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“…We traced this part to source plane using the best-fit model above, the corresponding source located in the northeast of the main source as shown in Figure 4 which suggests it is an extra individual component. S2 is also de-tected in ALMA [NII] 205 µm (data from Geach et al 2018) and described in (Doherty et al 2020). While this study failed to identify the detection with a second source, we confirm the presence of S2 at the same redshift as S1 through a combination of HST/WFC3 and [NII] observations.…”
Section: Second Lensed Sourcesupporting
confidence: 55%
“…Although we consider specifically the line ratio of [O III ]52/88 in this study, other pairs such as [N II ] lines at 122 and 205 µm (e.g. Zhao et al 2016;Doherty et al 2020) can also be the density indicator (see also Section 5.1). Far-infrared fine structure lines are useful to observationally study the density structure of high-redshift galaxies, in which the inside-out quenching driven by massive BHs can be occuring.…”
Section: [O III ] Line Modelmentioning
confidence: 99%