Large molecular and dust reservoir of a gravitationally-lensed submillimeter galaxy behind the Lupus-I molecular cloud

Abstract

We report the Australian Telescope Compact Array and Nobeyama 45 m telescope detection of a remarkably bright S1.1mm = 44 mJy) submillimeter galaxy MM J154506.4-344318 in emission lines at 48.5 and 97.0 GHz, respectively. We also identify part of an emission line at ≈ 218.3 GHz using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Together with photometric redshift estimates and the ratio between the line and infrared luminosities, we conclude that the emission lines are most likely to be the J = 2-1, 4-3, and 9-8 transitions of 12CO at redshift z = 3.753 0.001. ALMA 1.3 mm continuum imaging reveals an arc and a spot separated by an angular distance of 1.6 arcsec, indicative of a strongly-lensed dusty star-forming galaxy with respective molecular and dust masses of M mol/M ≈ 11.5 and M dust/M ≈ 9.4 after corrected for ≈ 6.6× gravitational magnification. The inferred dust-to-gas mass ratio is found to be high (≈ 0.0083) among coeval dusty star-forming galaxies, implying the presence of a massive, chemically-enriched reservoir of cool interstellar medium at z ≈ 4 or 1.6 Gyr after the Big Bang.

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