Red, redder, reddest: SCUBA-2 imaging of colour-selected Herschel sources

Duivenvoorden, S.; Oliver, S.; Scudder, J. M.; Greenslade, J.; Riechers, D. A.; Wilkins, S. M.; Buat, V.; Chapman, S. C.; Clements, D. L.; Cooray, A.; Coppin, K. E. K.; Dannerbauer, H.; De Zotti, G.; Dunlop, J. S.; Eales, S. A.; Efstathiou, A.; Farrah, D.; Geach, J. E.; Holland, W. S.; Hurley, P. D.; Ivison, R. J.; Marchetti, L.; Petitpas, G.; Sargent, M. T.; Scott, D.; Symeonidis, M.; Vaccari, M.; Vieira, J. D.; Wang, L.; Wardlow, J.; Zemcov, M.
Bibliographical reference

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 477, Issue 1, p.1099-1119

Advertised on:
6
2018
Number of authors
31
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
23
Refereed citations
21
Description
High-redshift, luminous, dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) constrain the extremity of galaxy formation theories. The most extreme are discovered through follow-up on candidates in large area surveys. Here, we present extensive 850 μm SCUBA-2 follow-up observations of 188 red DSFG candidates from the Herschel Multitiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) Large Mode Survey, covering 274 deg2. We detected 87 per cent with a signal-to-noise ratio >3 at 850 μm. We introduce a new method for incorporating the confusion noise in our spectral energy distribution fitting by sampling correlated flux density fluctuations from a confusion limited map. The new 850 μm data provide a better constraint on the photometric redshifts of the candidates, with photometric redshift errors decreasing from σz/(1 + z) ≈ 0.21 to 0.15. Comparison spectroscopic redshifts also found little bias (<(z - zspec)/(1 + zspec)> = 0.08). The mean photometric redshift is found to be 3.6 with a dispersion of 0.4 and we identify 21 DSFGs with a high probability of lying at z > 4. After simulating our selection effects we find number counts are consistent with phenomenological galaxy evolution models. There is a statistically significant excess of WISE-1 and SDSS sources near our red galaxies, giving a strong indication that lensing may explain some of the apparently extreme objects. Nevertheless, our sample includes examples of galaxies with the highest star formation rates in the Universe (≫103 M⊙ yr-1).
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