Principal Investigator: Prof. Justin Spilker (Texas A & M University)
Target: SPT2132-58
Scheduled Observation Start: 2024-09-05 at 16:14:52 UTC (04:14:52 PM)
Duration: 1 hour 1 min 3 sec
Abstract:
The most rapidly star-forming galaxies in the early universe are ubiquitously obscured by dust. Over the last decade, consensus emerged that nearly all such dusty starburts were the result of gas-rich major mergers that triggered the intense star formation and rapid dust production. Recent ALMA observations have challenged this view, finding kinematics consistent with secular rotation-dominated kinematics in the cold atomic gas. These controversial findings have drawn scrutiny from both observational and theoretical perspectives, with explanations ranging from mismatched comparisons with lower-redshift galaxies to unexpected consequences of cosmological gas accretion. We propose to address this controversy head- on, using NIRSpec IFU observations of H-alpha in five z~4-5 galaxies with existing high-resolution ALMA CII 158um data supplemented by inexpensive imaging to map the stellar light. Our observations will give an independent constraint on the galaxy kinematics using a different gas tracer that also avoids the complexities of interferometric ALMA data. We will make the first direct comparisons of the level of turbulent support between the warm ionized and cold neutral gas phases in individual galaxies at z>4, pushing the frontier of large 1<z<3 ground-based samples to the first ~1Gyr after the Big Bang. Together, the combination of deep, high-resolution JWST IFU and imaging data and ALMA CII and dust observations will settle recent controversies in the starburst galaxy kinematics and enable a novel multi-wavelength view of the stars, warm and cold gas, and dust in rapidly-assembling high-redshift galaxies.
Co-Investigators:
| Name | Institution |
|---|---|
| Prof. Joaquin Vieira | University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign |
| Mr. Kedar A Phadke | University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign |
| Seon Woo Kim | University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign |
| Prof. Daniel Marrone | University of Arizona |
| Dr. Christopher Hayward | Simons Foundation Center for Computational Astrophysics |
| Prof. Manuel Aravena | Diego Portales University |
| Dr. Matthieu Bethermin | Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille |
| Dr. Scott C. Chapman | University of British Columbia |
| Dr. Jack Birkin | Texas A & M University |
| Prof. Anthony Hernan Gonzalez | University of Florida |
| Dr. Ryley Hill | University of British Columbia |
| Ms. Sidney Lower | University of Florida |
| Dr. Desika Narayanan | University of Florida |
| Dr. Cassie Reuter | University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign |
| Dr. Axel Weiss | Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie |
| Jared Cathey | University of Florida |
Instruments: NIRSpec - Near-InfraRed Spectograph
MIRI - Mid-InfraRed Instrument
