Molecular Gas in a Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy Group at z = 2.9

Abstract

Most molecular gas studies of z > 2.5 galaxies are of intrinsically bright objects, despite the galaxy population being primarily normal galaxies with less extreme star formation rates. Observations of normal galaxies at high redshift provide a more representative view of galaxy evolution and star formation, but such observations are challenging to obtain. In this work, we present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 12 CO(J = 3 → 2) observations of a submillimeter selected galaxy group at z = 2.9, resulting in spectroscopic confirmation of seven images from four member galaxies. These galaxies are strongly lensed by the MS 0451.6-0305 foreground cluster at z = 0.55, allowing us to probe the molecular gas content on levels of 10 9 –10 10 M ⊙ . Four detected galaxies have molecular gas masses of (0.2–13.1) × 10 10 M ⊙ , and the nondetected galaxies have inferred molecular gas masses of <8.0 × 10 10 M ⊙ . We compare these new data to a compilation of 546 galaxies up to z = 5.3, and find that depletion times decrease with increasing redshift. We then compare the depletion times of galaxies in overdense environments to the field-scaling relation from the literature, and find that the depletion time evolution is steeper for galaxies in overdense environments than for those in the field. More molecular gas measurements of normal galaxies in overdense environments at higher redshifts ( z > 2.5) are needed to verify the environmental dependence of star formation and gas depletion.