Illuminating the Dark Side of Cosmic Star Formation. III. Building the Largest Homogeneous Sample of Radio-selected Dusty Star-forming Galaxies in COSMOS with PhoEBO
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In the last decades, an increasing scientific interest has been growing in the elusive population of dark (i.e., lacking an optical/near-IR, hereafter NIR, counterpart) dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). Although extremely promising for their likely contribution to the cosmic star formation rate density (SFRD) and for their possible role in the evolution of the first massive and passive galaxies around z ∼ 3, the difficulty in selecting statistically significant samples of dark DSFGs is limiting their scientific potentialities. This work presents the first panchromatic study of a sample of 263 radio-selected NIR-dark (RS-NIRdark) galaxies discovered in the COSMOS field following the procedure by Talia et al. These sources are selected as radio-bright galaxies (S 3 GHz > 12.65 μJy) with no counterpart in the NIR-selected COSMOS2020 catalog (Ks ≳ 25.5 mag). For these sources, we build a new photometric catalog including accurate photometry from the optical to the radio obtained with a new deblending pipeline (Photometry Extractor for Blended Objects, or PhoEBO). We employ this catalog to estimate the photo-zs and the physical properties of the galaxies through an spectral energy distribution-fitting procedure performed with two different codes (Magphys and Cigale). Finally, we estimate the active galactic nucleus contamination in our sample by performing a series of complementary tests. The high values of the median extinction (A v ∼ 4) and star formation rate (SFR ∼ 500 M ⊙ yr−1) confirm the likely DSFG nature of the RS-NIRdark galaxies. The median photo-z (z ∼ 3) and the presence of a significant tail of high-z candidates (z > 4.5) suggest that these sources are important contributors to the cosmic SFRD and the evolutionary path of galaxies at high redshifts.
Source: The Astrophysical Journal
Authors: Fabrizio Gentile, Margherita Talia, Meriem Behiri, Giovanni Zamorani, Luigi Barchiesi, Cristian Vignali, Francesca Pozzi, Matthieu Bethermin, Andrea Enia, Andreas L. Faisst, Marika Giulietti, Carlotta Gruppioni, Andrea Lapi, Marcella Massardi, Vernesa Smolčić, Mattia Vaccari, Andrea Cimatti
Institutions: Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio, National Institute for Astrophysics, University of Bologna, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, California Institute of Technology, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Istituto di Radioastronomia di Bologna, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste, Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, University of Zagreb, University of Cape Town, Inter-university Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, University of the Western Cape
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,499
OpenAlex ID: W4391474870