Search

Despite its crucial role in galaxy evolution, the complex circumgalactic medium (CGM) remains underexplored. Although it is known to be multi-phase, the importance of the molecular gas phase to the total CGM mass budget is, to date, unconstrained. We present the first constraints on the molecular gas covering fraction in the CGM of low-redshift galaxies, using measurements of CO column densities along sightlines towards mm-bright background quasars with intervening galaxies. We do not detect molecular absorption against the background quasars. For the individual, low-redshift, 'normal' galaxy haloes probed here, we can therefore rule out the presence of an extremely molecular gas-rich CGM, as recently reported in high-redshift protoclusters and around luminous active galactic nuclei. We also set statistical limits on the volume filling factor of molecular material in the CGM as a whole, and as a function of radius. ISM-like molecular clouds of ~30 pc in radius with column densities of N(CO) >~ 10^16 cm^-2 have volume filling factors of less than 0.2 per cent. Large-scale smooth gas reservoirs are ruled out much more stringently. The development of this technique in the future will allow deeper constraining limits to be set on the importance (or unimportance) of molecular gas in the CGM., 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Wide, deep, blind continuum surveys at submillimetre/millimetre (submm/mm) wavelengths are required to provide a full inventory of the dusty, distant Universe. However, conducting such surveys to the necessary depth, with sub-arcsec angular resolution, is prohibitively time-consuming, even for the most advanced submm/mm telescopes. Here, we report the most recent results from the ALMACAL project, which exploits the 'free' calibration data from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) to map the lines of sight towards and beyond the ALMA calibrators. ALMACAL has now covered 1,001 calibrators, with a total sky coverage around 0.3 deg2, distributed across the sky accessible from the Atacama desert, and has accumulated more than 1,000h of integration. The depth reached by combining multiple visits to each field makes ALMACAL capable of searching for faint, dusty, star-forming galaxies (DSFGs), with detections at multiple frequencies to constrain the emission mechanism. Based on the most up-to-date ALMACAL database, we report the detection of 186 DSFGs with flux densities down to S870um ~ 0.2mJy, comparable with existing ALMA large surveys but less susceptible to cosmic variance. We report the number counts at five wavelengths between 870um and 3mm, in ALMA bands 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, providing a benchmark for models of galaxy formation and evolution. By integrating the observed number counts and the best-fitting functions, we also present the resolved fraction of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) and the CIB spectral shape. Combining existing surveys, ALMA has currently resolved about half of the CIB in the submm/mm regime., Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Full list of authors: Glowacki, Marcin; Collier, Jordan D.; Kazemi-Moridani, Amir; Frank, Bradley; Roberts, Hayley; Darling, Jeremy; Klöckner, Hans-Rainer; Adams, Nathan; Baker, Andrew J.; Bershady, Matthew; Blecher, Tariq; Blyth, Sarah-Louise; Bowler, Rebecca; Catinella, Barbara; Chemin, Laurent; Crawford, Steven M.; Cress, Catherine; Davé, Romeel; Deane, Roger; de Blok, Erwin; Delhaize, Jacinta; Duncan, Kenneth; Elson, Ed; February, Sean; Gawiser, Eric; Hatfield, Peter; Healy, Julia; Henning, Patricia; Hess, Kelley M.; Heywood, Ian; Holwerda, Benne W.; Hoosain, Munira; Hughes, John P.; Hutchens, Zackary L.; Jarvis, Matt; Kannappan, Sheila; Katz, Neal; Kereš, Dušan; Korsaga, Marie; Kraan-Korteweg, Renée C.; Lah, Philip; Lochner, Michelle; Maddox, Natasha; Makhathini, Sphesihle; Meurer, Gerhardt R.; Meyer, Martin; Obreschkow, Danail; Oh, Se-Heon; Oosterloo, Tom; Oppor, Joshua; Pan, Hengxing; Pisano, D. J.; Randriamiarinarivo, Nandrianina; Ravindranath, Swara; Schröder, Anja C.; Skelton, Rosalind; Smirnov, Oleg; Smith, Mathew; Somerville, Rachel S.; Srianand, Raghunathan; Staveley-Smith, Lister; Tanaka, Masayuki; Vaccari, Mattia; van Driel, Wim; Verheijen, Marc; Walter, Fabian; Wu, John F.; Zwaan, Martin A..--This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., In the local universe, OH megamasers (OHMs) are detected almost exclusively in infrared-luminous galaxies, with a prevalence that increases with IR luminosity, suggesting that they trace gas-rich galaxy mergers. Given the proximity of the rest frequencies of OH and the hyperfine transition of neutral atomic hydrogen (H i), radio surveys to probe the cosmic evolution of H i in galaxies also offer exciting prospects for exploiting OHMs to probe the cosmic history of gas-rich mergers. Using observations for the Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array (LADUMA) deep H i survey, we report the first untargeted detection of an OHM at z > 0.5, LADUMA J033046.20−275518.1 (nicknamed "Nkalakatha"). The host system, WISEA J033046.26−275518.3, is an infrared-luminous radio galaxy whose optical redshift z ≈ 0.52 confirms the MeerKAT emission-line detection as OH at a redshift zOH = 0.5225 ± 0.0001 rather than H i at lower redshift. The detected spectral line has 18.4σ peak significance, a width of 459 ± 59 km s−1, and an integrated luminosity of (6.31 ± 0.18 [statistical] ± 0.31 [systematic]) × 103 L⊙, placing it among the most luminous OHMs known. The galaxy's far-infrared luminosity LFIR = (1.576 ±0.013) × 1012 L⊙ marks it as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy; its ratio of OH and infrared luminosities is similar to those for lower-redshift OHMs. A comparison between optical and OH redshifts offers a slight indication of an OH outflow. This detection represents the first step toward a systematic exploitation of OHMs as a tracer of galaxy growth at high redshifts. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., M.G. acknowledges support from IDIA and was partially supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP210102103). A.K.M. and A.J.B. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1814421. A.K.M. also thanks the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, which is funded by the LSST Corporation, NSF grant OAC-1829740, the Brinson Foundation, and the Moore Foundation; his participation in the program has been helpful for this work. H.R. and Je.D. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1814648; M.B. and J.O. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1814682; R.B. acknowledges support from an STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (grant No. ST/T003596/1); Ja.D. and H.P. acknowledge the financial assistance of SARAO; K.M.H. acknowledges funding from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" awarded to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709); from grant RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities/State Agency for Research/European Regional Development Funds, European Union); and from the coordination of the participation in SKA-SPAIN, funded by the Ministry of Science and innovation (MICIN); and Z.L.H. and S.K. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1814486. Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013, and by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and the NRF.

We present a pilot, untargeted extragalactic carbon monoxide (CO) emission-line survey using ALMACAL, a project utilizing ALMA calibration data for scientific purposes. In 33 deep (Texp > 40 min) ALMACAL fields, we report six CO emission-line detections above S/N > 4, one-third confirmed by MUSE observations. With this pilot survey, we probe a cosmologically significant volume of ∼105 cMpc3, widely distributed over many pointings in the southern sky, making the survey largely insusceptible to the effects of cosmic variance. We derive the redshift probability of the CO detections using probability functions from the Shark semi-analytical model of galaxy formation. By assuming typical CO excitations for the detections, we put constraints on the cosmic molecular gas mass density evolution over the redshift range 0 < z < 1.5. The results of our pilot survey are consistent with the findings of other untargeted emission-line surveys and the theoretical model predictions and currently cannot rule out a non-evolving molecular gas mass density. Our study demonstrates the potential of using ALMA calibrator fields as a multi-sightline untargeted CO emission-line survey. Applying this approach to the full ALMACAL database will provide an accurate, free of cosmic variance, measurement of the molecular luminosity function as a function of redshift.

Observations of the cosmic evolution of different gas phases across time indicate a marked increase in the molecular gas mass density towards $z\sim 2-3$. Such a transformation implies an accompanied change in the global distribution of molecular hydrogen column densities ($N_{\rm{H_2}}$). Using observations by PHANGS-ALMA/SDSS and simulations by GRIFFIN/IllustrisTNG we explore the evolution of this H$_2$ column density distribution function [$f(N_{\rm{H}_2})$]. The H$_2$ (and HI) column density maps for TNG50 and TNG100 are derived in post-processing and are made available through the IllustrisTNG online API. The shape and normalization of $f(N_{\rm{H}_2})$ of individual main-sequence star-forming galaxies are correlated with the star formation rate (SFR), stellar mass (${M_*}$), and H$_2$ mass ($M_{\rm{H}_2}$) in both observations and simulations. TNG100, combined with H$_2$ post-processing models, broadly reproduces observations, albeit with differences in slope and normalization. Also, an analytically modelled $f(N)$, based on exponential gas disks, matches well with the simulations. The GRIFFIN simulation gives first indications that the slope of $f(N_{\rm{H}_2})$ might not majorly differ when including non-equilibrium chemistry in simulations. The $f(N_{\rm{H}_2})$ by TNG100 implies that higher molecular gas column densities are reached at $z=3$ than at $z=0$. Further, denser regions contribute more to the molecular mass density at $z=3$. Finally, H$_2$ starts dominating compared to HI only at column densities above log($N_{\rm{H}_2} / \rm{cm}^{-2}) \sim 21.8-22$ at both redshifts. These results imply that neutral atomic gas is an important contributor to the overall cold gas mass found in the ISM of galaxies including at densities typical for molecular clouds at $z=0$ and $z=3$., 16 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Full list of authors: Lee, Bumhyun; Wang, Jing; Chung, Aeree; Ho, Luis C.; Wang, Ran; Michiyama, Tomonari; Molina, Juan; Kim, Yongjung; Shao, Li; Kilborn, Virginia; Wang, Shun; Lin, Xuchen; Kim, Dawoon E.; Catinella, Barbara; Cortese, Luca; Deg, Nathan; Denes, Helga; Elagali, Ahmed; For, Bi-Qing; Kleiner, Dane; Koribalski, Barbel S.; Lee-Waddell, Karen; Rhee, Jonghwan; Spekkens, Kristine; Westmeier, Tobias; Wong, O. Ivy; Bigiel, Frank; Bosma, Albert; Holwerda, Benne W.; van der Hulst, Jan M.; Roychowdhury, Sambit; Verdes-Montenegro, Lourdes; Zwaan, Martin A.--This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., We present new results of a 12CO(J = 1–0) imaging survey using the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) for 31 H i detected galaxies in the IC 1459 and NGC 4636 groups. This is the first CO imaging survey for loose galaxy groups. We obtained well-resolved CO data (∼0.7–1.5 kpc) for a total of 16 galaxies in two environments. By comparing our ACA CO data with the H i and UV data, we probe the impacts of the group environment on the cold gas components (CO and H i gas) and star formation activity. We find that CO and/or H i morphologies are disturbed in our group members, some of which show highly asymmetric CO distributions (e.g., IC 5264, NGC 7421, and NGC 7418). In comparison with isolated galaxies in the xCOLD GASS sample, our group galaxies tend to have low star formation rates and low H2 gas fractions. Our findings suggest that the group environment can change the distribution of cold gas components, including the molecular gas and star formation properties of galaxies. This is supporting evidence that preprocessing in the group-like environment can play an important role in galaxy evolution. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., B.L. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation of China (12073002, 11721303, 11991052) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0400702). B.L. is supported by the Boya Fellowship at Peking University. B.L. gratefully thanks Hyein Yoon for useful discussions. This work was partly supported by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (Project No. 2022-1-840-05). Support for this work was also provided by the National Research Foundation of Korea by grant No. 2018R1D1A1B07048314. J.W. acknowledges the science research grants from the China Manned Space Project with No. CMS-CSST-2021-B02. L.C.H. was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (11721303, 11991052, 12011540375) and the China Manned Space Project (CMS-CSST-2021-A04, CMS-CSST-2021-A06). T.M. appreciates support from NAOJ ALMA Scientific Research grant No. 2021-17A. T.M. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant No. 22K14073. J.M.vdH. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC grant Agreement No. 291531 ('HIStoryNU'). Y.K. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (No. 2021R1C1C2091550) and acknowledges the support from China Postdoc Science General (2020M670022), and Special (2020T130018) grants funded by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation. Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. L.C. is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT180100066) funded by the Australian Government. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 679627; project name FORNAX). K.S. acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). A.B. acknowledges support from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France. L.V.M. acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" awarded to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), from grant RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities/State Agency for Research/European Regional Development Funds, European Union), and grant IAA4SKA (Ref. P18-RT-3082) from the Consejeria de Transformacion Economica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades de la Junta de Andalucia and the European Regional Development Fund from the European Union.F.B. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 726384/Empire).

We measure how the atomic gas (HI) fraction ($f_{HI}={\rm \frac{M_{HI}}{M_{*}}}$) of groups and pairs taken as single units vary with average stellar mass ($\langle {\rm M_*} \rangle$) and average star-formation rate ($\langle {\rm SFR} \rangle$), compared to isolated galaxies. The HI 21 cm emission observation are from (i) archival ALFALFA survey data covering three fields from the GAMA survey (provides environmental and galaxy properties), and (ii) DINGO pilot survey data of one of those fields. The mean $f_{HI}$ for different units (groups/pairs/isolated galaxies) are measured in regions of the log($\langle {\rm M_*} \rangle$) -- log($\langle {\rm SFR} \rangle$) plane, relative to the z $\sim 0$ star-forming main sequence (SFMS) of individual galaxies, by stacking $f_{HI}$ spectra of individual units. For ALFALFA, $f_{HI}$ spectra of units are measured by extracting HI spectra over the full groups/pair areas and dividing by the total stellar mass of member galaxies. For DINGO, $f_{HI}$ spectra of units are measured by co-adding HI spectra of individual member galaxies, followed by division by their total stellar mass. For all units the mean $f_{HI}$ decreases as we move to higher $\langle {\rm M_*} \rangle$ along the SFMS, and as we move from above the SFMS to below it at any $\langle {\rm M_*} \rangle$. From the DINGO-based study, mean $f_{HI}$ in groups appears to be lower compared to isolated galaxies for all $\langle {\rm M_*} \rangle$ along the SFMS. From the ALFALFA-based study we find substantially higher mean $f_{HI}$ in groups compared to isolated galaxies (values for pairs being intermediate) for ${\langle{\rm M_*}\rangle}\lesssim10^{9.5}~{\rm M_{\odot}}$, indicating the presence of substantial amounts of HI not associated with cataloged member galaxies in low mass groups., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Main text: 26 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables

We present results of the MUSE-ALMA Halos, an ongoing study of the Circum-Galactic Medium (CGM) of low redshift galaxies (z < 1.4), currently comprising 14 strong HI absorbers in five quasar fields. We detect 43 galaxies associated with absorbers down to star formation rate (SFR) limits of 0.01-0.1 solar masses/yr, found within impact parameters (b) of 250 kpc from the quasar sightline. Excluding the targeted absorbers, we report a high detection rate of 89 per cent and find that most absorption systems are associated with pairs or groups of galaxies (three to eleven members). We note that galaxies with the smallest impact parameters are not necessarily the closest to the absorbing gas in velocity space. Using a multi-wavelength dataset (UVES/HIRES, HST, MUSE), we combine metal and HI column densities, allowing for derivation of the lower limits of neutral gas metallicity as well as emission line diagnostics (SFR, metallicities) of the ionised gas in the galaxies. We find that groups of associated galaxies follow the canonical relations of N(HI) -- b and W_r(2796) -- b, defining a region in parameter space below which no absorbers are detected. The metallicity of the ISM of associated galaxies, when measured, is higher than the metallicity limits of the absorber. In summary, our findings suggest that the physical properties of the CGM of complex group environments would benefit from associating the kinematics of individual absorbing components with each galaxy member., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 23 pages, 25 figures

The systematic targeting of extended Ly$\alpha$ emission around high-redshift quasars resulted in the discovery of rare and bright Enormous Ly$\alpha$ Nebulae (ELANe) associated with multiple active galactic nuclei (AGN). We here initiate "a multiwavelength study of ELAN environments" (AMUSE$^2$) focusing on the ELAN around the $z\sim3$ quasar SDSS J1040+1020, a.k.a. the Fabulous ELAN. We report on VLT/HAWK-I, APEX/LABOCA, JCMT/SCUBA-2, SMA/850$\mu$m, ALMA/CO(5-4) and 2mm observations and compare them to previously published VLT/MUSE data. The continuum and line detections enable a first estimate of the star-formation rates, dust, stellar and molecular gas masses in four objects associated with the ELAN (three AGNs and one Ly$\alpha$ emitter), confirming that the quasar host is the most star-forming (${\rm SFR}\sim500$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$) and massive galaxy ($M_{\rm star}\sim10^{11}$ M$_{\odot}$) in the system, and thus can be assumed as central. All four embedded objects have similar molecular gas reservoirs ($M_{\rm H_2}\sim10^{10}$ M$_{\odot}$), resulting in short depletion time scales. This fact together with the estimated total dark-matter halo mass, $M_{\rm DM}=(0.8-2)\times10^{13}$ M$_{\odot}$, implies that this ELAN will evolve into a giant elliptical galaxy. Consistently, the constraint on the baryonic mass budget for the whole system indicates that the majority of baryons should reside in a massive warm-hot reservoir (up to $10^{12}$ M$_{\odot}$), needed to complete the baryons count. Additionally, we discuss signatures of gas infall on the compact objects as traced by Ly$\alpha$ radiative transfer effects and the evidence for the alignment between the satellites' spins and their directions to the central., Comment: 26 pages, 19 figures, 4 appendix; submitted to ApJ

Measurements of the cosmic far-infrared background (CIB) indicate that emission from many extragalactic phenomena, including star formation and black hole accretion, in the Universe can be obscured by dust. Resolving the CIB to study the population of galaxies in which this activity takes place is a major goal of submillimetre astronomy. Here, we present interferometric 650$\mu$m submillimetre number counts. Using the Band 8 data from the ALMACAL survey, we have analysed 81 ALMA calibrator fields together covering a total area of 5.5~arcmin$^2$. The typical central rms in these fields is $\sim 100 \mu$Jy~beam$^{-1}$ with the deepest maps reaching $\sigma = 47 \mu$Jy~beam$^{-1}$ at sub-arcsec resolution. Multi-wavelength coverage from ALMACAL allows us to exclude contamination from jets associated with the calibrators. However, residual contamination by jets and lensing remain a possibility. Using a signal-to-noise threshold of $4.5\sigma$, we find 21 dusty, star-forming galaxies with 650$\mu$m flux densities of $\geq 0.7 $mJy. At the detection limit we resolve $\simeq 100$ per cent of the CIB at 650$\mu$m, a significant improvement compared to low resolution studies at similar wavelength. We have therefore identified all the sources contributing to the EBL at 650 microns and predict that the contribution from objects with flux 0.7, Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Starburst galaxies at redshifts z~2 to 4 are among the most intensely star-forming galaxies in the universe. The way they accrete their gas to form stars at such high rates is still a controversial issue. We have detected the CH+(1-0) line in emission and/or in absorption in all the gravitationally lensed starburst galaxies observed so far with ALMA in this redshift range. The unique spectroscopic and chemical properties of CH+ allow its rotational transition to highlight the sites of dissipation of mechanical energy. Whilst the absorption lines reveal highly turbulent reservoirs of low-density molecular gas extending far out of the galaxies, the broad emission lines with widths up to a few thousands of km/s, arise in myriad molecular shocks powered by the feedback of star formation and possibly active galactic nuclei. The CH+(1-0) lines therefore probe the sites of prodigious energy releases, mainly stored in turbulent reservoirs before being radiated away. These turbulent reservoirs act as extended buffers of mass and energy over timescales of a few tens to hundreds of Myr. Their mass supply involves multi-phasic gas inflows from galaxy mergers and/or cold stream accretion, as supported by Keck/KCWI Lyα observations of one of these starburst galaxies.

Galaxy halos appear to be missing a large fraction of their baryons, most probably hiding in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), a diffuse component within the dark matter halo that extends far from the inner regions of the galaxies. A powerful tool to study the CGM gas is offered by absorption lines in the spectra of background quasars. Here, we present optical (MUSE) and mm (ALMA) observations of the field of the quasar Q1130-1449 which includes a log [N(H I)/cm^-2]=21.71+/-0.07 absorber at z=0.313. Ground-based VLT/MUSE 3D spectroscopy shows 11 galaxies at the redshift of the absorber down to a limiting SFR>0.01 M_sun yr^-1 (covering emission lines of [OII], Hbeta, [OIII], [NII] and Halpha), 7 of which are new discoveries. In particular, we report a new emitter with a smaller impact parameter to the quasar line-of-sight (b=10.6 kpc) than the galaxies detected so far. Three of the objects are also detected in CO(1-0) in our ALMA observations indicating long depletion timescales for the molecular gas and kinematics consistent with the ionised gas. We infer from dedicated numerical cosmological RAMSES zoom-in simulations that the physical properties of these objects qualitatively resemble a small group environment, possibly part of a filamentary structure. Based on metallicity and velocity arguments, we conclude that the neutral gas traced in absorption is only partly related to these emitting galaxies while a larger fraction is likely the signature of gas with surface brightness almost four orders of magnitude fainter that current detection limits. Together, these findings challenge a picture where strong-HI quasar absorbers are associated with a single bright galaxy and favour a scenario where the HI gas probed in absorption is related to far more complex galaxy structures., Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 20 pages, 9 figures

We are just starting to understand the physical processes driving the dramatic change in cosmic star-formation rate between $z\sim 2$ and the present day. A quantity directly linked to star formation is the molecular gas density, which should be measured through independent methods to explore variations due to cosmic variance and systematic uncertainties. We use intervening CO absorption lines in the spectra of mm-bright background sources to provide a census of the molecular gas mass density of the Universe. The data used in this work are taken from ALMACAL, a wide and deep survey utilizing the ALMA calibrator archive. While we report multiple Galactic absorption lines and one intrinsic absorber, no extragalactic intervening molecular absorbers are detected. However, thanks to the large redshift path surveyed ($\Delta z=182$), we provide constraints on the molecular column density distribution function beyond $z\sim 0$. In addition, we probe column densities of N(H$_2$) > 10$^{16}$ atoms~cm$^{-2}$, five orders of magnitude lower than in previous studies. We use the cosmological hydrodynamical simulation IllustrisTNG to show that our upper limits of $\rho ({\rm H}_2)\lesssim 10^{8.3} \text{M}_{\odot} \text{Mpc}^{-3}$ at $0 < z \leq 1.7$ already provide new constraints on current theoretical predictions of the cold molecular phase of the gas. These results are in agreement with recent CO emission-line surveys and are complementary to those studies. The combined constraints indicate that the present decrease of the cosmic star-formation rate history is consistent with an increasing depletion of molecular gas in galaxies compared to $z\sim 2$., Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Gas-rich galaxies are selected efficiently via quasar absorption lines. Recently, a new perspective on such absorption-selected systems has opened up by studying the molecular gas content of absorber host galaxies using ALMA CO emission line observations. Here, we present an analysis of multiple CO transitions ($L'_{\rm CO} \sim 10^9$ K km s$^{-1}$) in two $z \sim 0.5$ galaxies associated with one Ly$\alpha$ absorber towards J0238+1636. The CO spectral line energy distribution (CO SLED) of these galaxies appear distinct from that of typical star-forming galaxies at similar redshifts and is comparable with that of luminous infrared galaxies or AGN. Indeed, these galaxies are associated with optically identified AGN activity. We infer that the CO line ratios and the $\alpha_{\rm CO}$ conversion factor differ from the Galactic values. Our findings suggest that at least a fraction of absorption selected systems shows ISM conditions deviating from those of normal star-forming galaxies. For a robust molecular gas mass calculation, it is therefore important to construct the CO SLED. Absorption-line-selection identifies systems with widely distributed gas, which may preferentially select interacting galaxies, which in turn will have more excited CO SLEDs than isolated galaxies. Furthermore, we raise the question whether quasar absorbers preferentially trace galaxy overdensities., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Studying the flow of baryons into and out of galaxies is an important part of understanding the evolution of galaxies over time. We present a detailed case study of the environment around an intervening Ly $\alpha$ absorption line system at $z_{\rm abs} = 0.633$, seen towards the quasar J0423$-$0130 ($z_{\rm QSO} = 0.915$). We detect with ALMA the $^{12}$CO(2--1), $^{12}$CO(3--2) and $1.2$~mm continuum emission from a galaxy at the redshift of the Ly $\alpha$ absorber at a projected distance of $135$ kpc. From the ALMA detections, we infer ISM conditions similar to those in low redshift Luminous Infrared Galaxies. DDT MUSE integral field unit observations reveal the optical counterpart of the $^{12}$CO emission line source and three additional emission line galaxies at the absorber redshift, which together form a galaxy group. The $^{12}$CO emission line detections originate from the most massive galaxy in this group. While we cannot exclude that we miss a fainter host, we reach a dust-uncorrected star-formation rate (SFR) limit of > $0.3 \text{M}_{\odot} \text{ yr}^{-1}$ within $100$ kpc from the sightline to the background quasar. We measure the dust-corrected SFR (ranging from $3$ to $50$ M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$), the morpho-kinematics and the metallicities of the four group galaxies to understand the relation between the group and the neutral gas probed in absorption. We find that the Ly $\alpha$ absorber traces either an outflow from the most massive galaxy or intra-group gas. This case study illustrates the power of combining ALMA and MUSE to obtain a census of the cool baryons in a bounded structure at intermediate redshift., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 9 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Chandra X-ray observatory has discovered several dozen anomalously X-ray-bright jets associated with powerful quasars. A popular explanation for the X-ray flux from the knots in these jets is that relativistic synchrotron-emitting electrons inverse-Compton scatter Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons to X-ray energies (the IC/CMB model). This model predicts a high gamma-ray flux which should be detectable by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) for many sources. GeV-band upper limits from Fermi/LAT for the well-known anomalous X-ray jet in PKS 0637-752 were previously shown in Meyer et al., (2015) to violate the predictions of the IC/CMB model. Previously, measurements of the jet synchrotron spectrum, important for accurately predicting the gamma-ray flux level, were lacking between radio and infrared wavelengths. Here we present new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of the large-scale jet at 100, 233, and 319 GHz which further constrain the synchrotron spectrum, supporting the previously published empirical model. We also present updated limits from the Fermi/LAT using the new `Pass 8' calibration and approximately 30% more time on source. With these deeper limits we rule out the IC/CMB model at the 8.7 sigma level. Finally, we demonstrate that complete knowledge of the synchrotron SED is critical in evaluating the IC/CMB model., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters (v2 corrects typo in author list)

E+A galaxies are post-starburst systems that are identified from their optical spectra. These galaxies contain a substantial young A-type stellar component, but have only little ongoing star formation (SF). HI 21-cm line emission is found in approximately half of the nearby E+A galaxies, indicating that they contain a reservoir of gas that could fuel active SF. Here, we study two HI-rich galaxies, which show a typical E+A spectrum at the centre and SF at larger radii. We present new high spatial resolution radio interferometric observations of the HI 21-cm emission line using the VLA and of the CO(1-0) emission line using ALMA. We combine these data sets to predict the SFR and show that it does not correlate well with the SFR derived from H alpha on sub-kpc scales. We apply a recently developed statistical model for the small scale behaviour of the SF relation to predict and interpret the observed scatter. We find smoothly distributed, regularly rotating HI gas. The CO(1-0) emission line is not detected for both galaxies. The derived upper limit on the CO mass implies a molecular gas depletion time shorter than 20 Myr. However, due to the low metallicity, the CO-to-H2 conversion factor is highly uncertain. In the relations between the H alpha-based SFR and the HI mass, we observe a substantial scatter we demonstrate results from small-number statistics of independent star-forming regions on sub-kpc scales. This finding adds to the existing literature reporting a scale dependence of the molecular SF relation, showing that the atomic and molecular phases are both susceptible to the evolutionary 'cycling' of individual regions. This suggests that the atomic gas reservoirs host substantial substructure, which should be observable with future high-resolution observations. (abridged), 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics