The bright end of the infrared luminosity functions and the abundance of hyperluminous infrared galaxies
Bondi, M.; Prandoni, I.; Małek, K.; Wang, L.; Tasse, C.; Farrah, D.; Vaccari, M.; Hardcastle, M. J.; Röttgering, H. J. A.; Duncan, K.; Bonato, M.; Smith, D. J. B.; Shimwell, T.; Pearson, W. J.; Gürkan, G.; Best, P. N.; Sabater, J.; Williams, W. L.; Kondapally, R.; Cochrane, R. K.; Haskell, P.; McCheyne, I.; Gao, F.
Netherlands, United Kingdom, Poland, France, South Africa, Italy, United States, Australia
Abstract
Aims: We provide the most accurate estimate yet of the bright end of the infrared (IR) luminosity functions (LFs) and the abundance of hyperluminous IR galaxies (HLIRGs) with IR luminosities >1013L⊙, thanks to the combination of the high sensitivity, angular resolution, and large area of the LOFAR Deep Fields, which probes an unprecedented dynamic range of luminosity and volume.
Methods: We cross-match Herschel sources and LOFAR sources in Boötes (8.63 deg2), Lockman Hole (10.28 deg2), and ELAIS-N1 (6.74 deg2) with rms sensitivities of ~32, 22, and 20 μJy beam−1, respectively. We divide the matched samples into "unique" and "multiple" categories. For the multiple matches, we de-blend the Herschel fluxes using the LOFAR positions and the 150-MHz flux densities as priors. We perform spectral energy distribution fitting, combined with multi-wavelength counterpart identifications and photometric redshift estimates, to derive IR luminosities.
Results: The depth of the LOFAR data allows us to identify highly complete (~92% completeness) samples of bright Herschel sources with a simple selection based on the 250 μm flux density (45, 40, and 35 mJy in Boötes, Lockman Hole, and ELAIS-N1, respectively). Most of the bright Herschel sources fall into the unique category (i.e. a single LOFAR counterpart). For the multiple matches, there is excellent correspondence between the radio emission and the far-IR emission. We find a good agreement in the IR LFs with a previous study out to z ~ 6 which used de-blended Herschel data. Our sample gives the strongest and cleanest indication to date that the population of HLIRGs has surface densities of ~5 to ~18/deg2 (with variations due to a combination of the applied flux limit and cosmic variance) and an uncertainty of a factor of ≲2. In comparison, the GALFORM semi-analytic model significantly under-predicts the abundance of HLIRGs.