Optical-faint, far-infrared-bright herschel sources in the candels fields: ultra-luminous infrared galaxies at z > 1 and the effect of source blending

The Herschel very wide field surveys have charted hundreds of square degrees in multiple far-IR (FIR) bands. While the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is currently the best resource for optical counterpart identifications over such wide areas, it does not detect a large number of Herschel FIR source...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Pérez González, Pablo Guillermo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/33959
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/33959
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:52
Star-forming galaxies
Hubble-deep-field
Extended groth strip
Extragalactic legacy survey
Submillimeter galaxies
High-redshift
Photometric redshifts
Massive galaxies
Alma survey
Mu-m.
Astrofísica
Astronomía (Física)
Física atmosférica
2501 Ciencias de la Atmósfera
Descripción
Sumario:The Herschel very wide field surveys have charted hundreds of square degrees in multiple far-IR (FIR) bands. While the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is currently the best resource for optical counterpart identifications over such wide areas, it does not detect a large number of Herschel FIR sources and leaves their nature undetermined. As a test case, we studied seven “SDSS-invisible,” very bright 250μm sources (S250 > 55 mJy) in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey fields where we have a rich multi-wavelength data set. We took a new approach to decompose the FIR sources, using the near-IR or the optical images directly for position priors. This is an improvement over the previous decomposition efforts where the priors are from mid-IR data that still suffer from the problem of source blending. We found that in most cases the single Herschel sources are made of multiple components that are not necessarily at the same redshifts. Our decomposition succeeded in identifying and extracting their major contributors. We show that these are all ultra-luminous infrared galaxies at z ∼ 1–2 whose high LIR is mainly due to dust-obscured star formation. Most of them would not be selected as submillimeter galaxies. They all have complicated morphologies indicative of mergers or violent instability, and their stellar populations are heterogeneous in terms of stellar masses, ages, and formation histories. Their current ultra-luminous infrared galaxy phases are of various degrees of importance in their stellar mass assembly. Our practice provides a promising starting point for developing an automatic routine to reliably study bright Herschel sources.