Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-04-03
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
23 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to MNRAS
Scientific paper
We combine the galaxy formation model GALFORM with the Photon Dominated Region code UCL_PDR to study the emission from the rotational transitions of 12CO (CO) in galaxies from z=0 to z=6 in the LambdaCDM framework. GALFORM is used to predict the molecular (H_2) and atomic hydrogen (HI) gas contents of galaxies using the pressure-based empirical star formation relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky. From the predicted H_2 mass and the conditions in the interstellar medium, we estimate the CO emission by applying the UCL_PDR model to each galaxy. We find that deviations from the Milky-Way CO-H_2 conversion factor come mainly from variations in metallicity, and in the average gas and star formation rate surface densities. In the local universe, the model predicts a CO(1-0) luminosity function (LF), CO-to-total infrared (IR) luminosity ratios for multiple CO lines and a CO spectral line energy distribution (SLED) which are in good agreement with observations of luminous and ultra-luminous IR galaxies. At high redshifts, the predicted CO SLED of the brightest IR galaxies reproduces the shape and normalization of the observed CO SLED. The model predicts little evolution in the CO-to-IR luminosity ratio for different CO transitions, in good agreement with observations up to z~5. We use this new hybrid model to explore the potential of using colour selected samples of high-redshift star-forming galaxies to characterise the evolution of the cold gas mass in galaxies through observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.
Baugh Carlton M.
Bayet Estelle
Bell Tom
Fanidakis Nikolaos
Geach James
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