Bibcode
Boone, F.; Schaerer, D.; Pelló, R.; Lutz, D.; Weiss, A.; Egami, E.; Smail, I.; Rex, M.; Rawle, T.; Ivison, R.; Laporte, N.; Beelen, A.; Combes, F.; Blain, A. W.; Richard, J.; Kneib, J.-P.; Zamojski, M.; Dessauges-Zavadsky, M.; Altieri, B.; van der Werf, P.; Swinbank, M.; Pérez-González, P. G.; Clement, B.; Nordon, R.; Magnelli, B.; Menten, K. M.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 534, id.A124, 8 pp.
Advertised on:
10
2011
Journal
Citations
13
Refereed citations
10
Description
The spectral energy distributions (SED) of dusty galaxies at
intermediate redshift may look similar to very high-redshift galaxies in
the optical/near infrared (NIR) domain. This can lead to the
contamination of high-redshift galaxy searches based on broad-band
optical/NIR photometry by lower redshift dusty galaxies because both
kind of galaxies cannot be distinguished. The contamination rate could
be as high as 50%. This work shows how the far-infrared (FIR) domain can
help to recognize likely low-z interlopers in an optical/NIR search for
high-z galaxies. We analyze the FIR SEDs of two galaxies that are
proposed to be very high-redshift (z > 7) dropout candidates based on
deep Hawk-I/VLT observations. The FIR SEDs are sampled with
PACS/Herschel at 100 and 160 μm, with SPIRE/Herschel at 250, 350 and
500 μm and with LABOCA/APEX at 870 μm. We find that redshifts >
7 would imply extreme FIR SEDs (with dust temperatures >100 K and FIR
luminosities >1013 L⊙). At z ~ 2, instead,
the SEDs of both sources would be compatible with those of typical ultra
luminous infrared galaxies or submillimeter galaxies. Considering all
available data for these sources from visible to FIR we re-estimate the
redshifts and find z ~ 1.6-2.5. Owing to the strong spectral breaks
observed in these galaxies, standard templates from the literature fail
to reproduce the visible-to-near-IR part of the SEDs even when
additional extinction is included. These sources strongly resemble
dust-obscured galaxies selected in Spitzer observations with extreme
visible-to-FIR colors, and the galaxy GN10 at z = 4. Galaxies with
similar SEDs could contaminate other high-redshift surveys.