The ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the HUDF: A Search for [C II] Emitters at 6 ≤ z ≤ 8
Carilli, Chris; Inami, Hanae; Stefanon, Mauro; Walter, Fabian; Boogaard, Leindert; Oesch, Pascal A.; Bouwens, Rychard; Aravena, Manuel; Díaz-Santos, Tanio; Decarli, Roberto; Labbe, Ivo; Cox, Pierre; Weiss, Axel; Riechers, Dominik; Daddi, Emmanuele; Popping, Gergö; González-López, Jorge; Cortes, Paulo C.; Van der Werf, Paul; Uzgil, Bade D.; Fudamoto, Yoshi
United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Chile, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, China, Japan, France, Australia
Abstract
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Spectroscopic Survey in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (ASPECS) Band 6 scan (212-272 GHz) covers potential [C II] emission in galaxies at 6 ≤ z ≤ 8 throughout a 2.9 arcmin2 area. By selecting on known Lyα emitters (LAEs) and photometric dropout galaxies in the field, we perform targeted searches down to a 5σ [C II] luminosity depth L[C II] ∼ 2.0 × 108 L⊙, corresponding roughly to star formation rates (SFRs) of 10-20 M⊙ yr-1 when applying a locally calibrated conversion for star-forming galaxies, yielding zero detections. While the majority of galaxies in this sample are characterized by lower SFRs, the resulting upper limits on [C II] luminosity in these sources are consistent with the current literature sample of targeted ALMA observations of z = 6-7 LAEs and Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs), as well as the locally calibrated relations between L[C II] and SFR—with the exception of a single [C II]-deficient, UV-luminous LBG. We also perform a blind search for [C II]-bright galaxies that may have been missed by optical selections, resulting in an upper limit on the cumulative number density of [C II] sources with L[C II] > 2.0 × 108 L⊙ (5σ) to be less than 1.8 × 10-4 Mpc-3 (90% confidence level). At this luminosity depth and volume coverage, we present an observed evolution of the [C II] luminosity function from z = 6-8 to z ∼ 0 by comparing the ASPECS measurement to literature results at lower redshift.