Browsing by Author "Downes, D."

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    H2O emission in high-z ultra-luminous infrared galaxies
    (2013) Omont, A.; Yang, C.; Cox, P.; Neri, R.; Beelen, A.; Bussmann, R. S.; Gavazzi, R.; van der Werf, P.; Riechers, D.; Downes, D.; Krips, M.; Dye, S.; Ivison, R.; Vieira, J. D.; Weiss, A.; Aguirre, J. E.; Baes, M.; Baker, A. J.; Bertoldi, F.; Cooray, A.; Dannerbauer, H.; De Zotti, G.; Eales, S. A.; Fu, H.; Gao, Y.; Guelin, M.; Harris, A. I.; Jarvis, M.; Lehnert, M.; Leeuw, L.; Lupu, R.; Menten, K.; Michalowski, M. J.; Negrello, M.; Serjeant, S.; Temi, P.; Auld, R.; Dariush, A.; Dunne, L.; Fritz, J.; Hopwood, R.; Hoyos, C.; Ibar, E.; Maddox, S.; Smith, M. W. L.; Valiante, E.; Bock, J.; Bradford, C. M.; Glenn, J.; Scott, K. S.
    Using the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer (PdBI), we report the detection of water vapor in six new lensed ultra-luminous starburst galaxies at high redshift, discovered in the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS). The sources are detected either in the 2(02)-1(11) or 2(11)-2(02) H2O emission lines with integrated line fluxes ranging from 1.8 to 14 Jy km s(-1). The corresponding apparent luminosities are mu L-H2O similar to 3-12 x 10(8) L-circle dot, where mu is the lensing magnification factor (3 < mu < 12). These results confirm that H2O lines are among the strongest molecular lines in high-z ultra-luminous starburst galaxies, with intensities almost comparable to those of the high-J CO lines, and similar profiles and line widths (similar to 200-900 km s(-1)). With the current sensitivity of the PdBI, the water lines can therefore easily be detected in high-z lensed galaxies (with F(500 mu m) > 100 mJy) discovered in the Herschel surveys. Correcting the luminosities for amplification, using existing lensing models, L-H2O is found to have a strong dependence on the infrared luminosity, varying as similar to L-IR(1.2). This relation, which needs to be confirmed with better statistics, may indicate a role of radiative (infrared) excitation of the H2O lines, and implies that high-z galaxies with L-IR greater than or similar to 10(13) L-circle dot tend to be very strong emitters in water vapor, that have no equivalent in the local universe.