# The Submillimeter Search for Very High Redshift Galaxies

## 1 Introduction

The cumulative rest-frame far-infared (FIR) emission from all objects lying beyond our Galaxy, known as the cosmic FIR and submillimeter (submm) background, was recently detected by the FIRAS and DIRBE experiments on the COBE satellite (e.g. Puget et al. 1996; Fixsen et al. 1998). The discovery that this background was comparable to the total unobscured emission at optical/ultraviolet wavelengths immediately made it clear that a full accounting of the star formation history of the Universe could only be obtained through the resolution and detailed study of the individual components that make up the FIR/submm background.

The resolution of the background at 850 $`\mu `$m became possible with the installation of the Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA; Holland et al. 1999) on the 15m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea, and results are now available from both blank field and lensed cluster field surveys (Smail, Ivison, & Blain 1997; Hughes et al. 1998; Barger et al. 1998; Barger, Cowie, & Sanders 1999; Blain et al. 1999; Eales et al. 1999; Lilly et al. 1999). Barger, Cowie, & Sanders (1999) used optimal fitting techniques combined with Monte Carlo simulations of the completeness of the source count determinations to show that a differential source count parameterization

$$n(S)=N_0/(a+S^{3.2})$$
(1)   
reasonably fits both the cumulative 850 $`\mu `$m source counts and the 850 $`\mu `$m extragalactic background light (EBL) measurements. Here $`S`$ is the flux in mJy, $`N_0=3.0\times 10^4`$ per square degree per mJy, and the range $`a=0.41.0`$ matches the Fixsen et al. (1998) and Puget et al. (1996) EBL values. The 95 percent confidence range for the index is $`2.63.9`$. The extrapolation suggests that the typical submm source is about 1 mJy. The direct counts show that $`30`$ per cent of the 850 $`\mu `$m background comes from sources above 2 mJy.

## 2 Towards a redshift distribution

The redshift distribution of the submm population is needed to trace the extent and evolution of obscured star formation in the distant Universe. However, identifying the optical/NIR counterparts to the submm sources is difficult due to the uncertainty in the SCUBA positions. Barger et al. (1999b) presented a spectroscopic survey of possible optical counterparts to a flux-limited sample of galaxies selected from the 850 $`\mu `$m survey of massive lensing clusters by Smail et al. (1998). Identifications were attempted for all objects in the SCUBA error-boxes that were bright enough for reliable spectroscopy; redshifts or limits were obtained for 24 possible counterparts to 14 of the 17 SCUBA sources in the sample. The remaining three submm sources consisted of two blank fields and a third source that had not yet been imaged in the optical when the spectroscopic data were obtained. The redshift survey produced reliable identifications for six of the submm sources: two sets of galaxy pairs (a $`z=2.8`$ AGN/starburst (Ivison et al. 1998) and a $`z=2.6`$ starburst), two galaxies showing AGN signatures ($`z=1.16`$ and $`z=1.06`$), and two cD galaxies (cluster contamination). The galaxy pairs were later confirmed as the true counterparts through the detection at their redshifts of CO emission in the millimeter (Frayer et al. 1998, 1999). The relative paucity of AGNs in the general field population ($`<1`$%) suggests that if an AGN is identified, then the submm emission is most likely associated with that source. A lower limit of 20 per cent of the submm sources in the sample show signs of AGN activity.

For the eight remaining submm sources for which spectroscopic data of the most probable counterparts were obtained ($`z0.182.11`$), the identifications are uncertain. As mentioned above, two of the submm detections in the sample have no visible counterparts in very deep imaging ($`I26`$), and it is possible that the eight submm sources are similarly optically faint. We show in the next section that this is in fact highly likely. Such sources could either be at very high redshift or be so highly obscured that they are emitting their energy almost entirely in the submm. Using very deep NIR imaging of the cluster fields, Smail et al. (1999) recently detected possible extremely red object (ERO) counterparts to two of the submm sources tentatively identified with bright $`z0.5`$ spiral galaxies in Barger et al. (1999b).

## 3 Pinpointing submm sources via radio continuum observations

A promising alternative method for locating submm sources is through the use of radio continuum observations which can be made with subarcsecond positional accuracy and resolution. A relatively tight empirical correlation between radio continuum emission and thermal dust emission is known to exist in nearby star forming galaxies (Condon 1992). This FIR-radio correlation is due to both radiation processes being connected to massive star formation activity in a galaxy. We therefore decided to test whether the submm source population could be efficiently located by targeting known radio sources with SCUBA. We chose to use the complete Hubble flanking fields (HFF) 1.4 GHz VLA sample (70 sources at $`5\sigma `$) of Richards (1999). This sample is ideally suited for our purpose due to its uniform (8 $`\mu `$Jy at 1$`\sigma `$) sensitivity over the whole flanking field region and to the availability of corresponding deep ground-based optical and NIR imaging (Barger et al. 1999a). Richards et al. (1999) found that at the $`\mu `$Jy level 60% of the radio sources could be identified with bright disk galaxies ($`I<22`$) and 20% with low luminosity AGN. However, the remaining 20% could not be identified to optical magnitude limits of $`I=25`$.

We first made use of the precise radio positions to observe a complete subsample of the radio-selected objects with LRIS on the Keck II 10m telescope. In particular we wished to determine whether we could identify any spectral features in the optically-faint radio sources. We were able to spectroscopically identify nearly all the objects in our subsample to $`K<20`$ (max. redshift $`z1.2`$), but we could not obtain redshifts for the fainter objects. The latter objects might be highly obscured star forming galaxies and hence would be good SCUBA targets.

We targeted 14 of the 16 $`K>21`$ radio sources in the HFF sample using SCUBA in jiggle map mode, which enabled us to simultaneously observe a large fraction of the optical/NIR-bright radio sources (35/54). Even with relatively shallow SCUBA observations (a 3$`\sigma `$ detection limit of 6 mJy at $`850\mu `$m), we were able to make 5 submm detections ($`>3\sigma `$) of the 14 targeted $`K>21`$ sources; in contrast, none of the 35 optical/NIR-bright sources were detected. Additionally, we detected two $`>6`$ mJy sources in our observed fields (which cover slightly more than half of the HFF) that did not have radio detections.

Our high success rate with our targeted observations indicates that selection in the radio is an efficient means of detecting the majority of the bright submm source population. We illustrate this in Figure 1 where we compare our radio-selected submm source counts with the combined source counts from published blank field submm surveys. An important corollary to the optical/NIR-faint radio sources being detectable as bright submm sources is that a large fraction of the sources in submm surveys will have extremely faint optical/NIR counterparts and hence cannot be followed up with optical spectroscopy.

## 4 Millimetric Redshift Estimation

Although we are unable to obtain spectroscopic redshifts for the optical/NIR-faint radio-selected submm sources, we can use the shape of the spectral energy distribution (SED) in the radio and submm to obtain millimetric redshift estimates. The slope of the SED changes abruptly at frequencies below $`10^{11}`$ Hz when the dominant contribution to the SED changes from thermal dust emission to synchrotron radio emission. Carilli & Yun (1999) suggested that the presence of this spectral break would enable the use of the submm-to-radio ratio as a redshift estimator. Figure 2 shows how visual redshift estimates for the radio-selected submm sources can be made from a plot of radio flux, $`S_{1.4\mathrm{GHz}}`$, versus submm flux, $`S_{353\mathrm{GHz}}`$, for a range in luminosities of the prototypical ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIG) Arp 220. All of the submm sources detected in this survey fall in the redshift range $`z=13`$, consistent with the redshifts of the lensed submm sources (Barger et al. 1999b).

For $`z<3`$, we can express the Arp 220 predicted flux ratio as

$$S_{353\mathrm{GHz}}/S_{1.4\mathrm{GHz}}=1.1\times (1+z)^{3.8}$$
(2)   
The primary uncertainty in this relation is the dust temperature dependence, which in a local ULIG sample produces a multiplicative factor of 2 range in the ratio relative to Arp 220. We have found that all known submm sources with radio fluxes or limits and spectroscopic identifications are broadly consistent with the expected ratio, although those with AGN characteristics have slightly lower ratios.

## 5 Summary

About 30 per cent of the 850 $`\mu `$m background is already resolved, and the slope of the counts is sufficiently steep (a power law index of -2.2 for the cumulative counts) that only a small extrapolation to fainter fluxes will give convergence with the background. Thus, the typical submm source contributing to the background seems to be in the $`12`$ mJy range.

Identifying the optical/NIR counterparts to submm sources is difficult due to the poor submm spatial resolution and the intrinsic faintness of the sources. In a spectroscopic survey of a lensed submm sample, only about one-quarter of the sources had optical counterparts bright enough to be spectroscopically identified, a large fraction of which showed AGN characteristics. We have recently found an alternative method for locating submm sources by targeting with SCUBA optical/NIR-faint radio sources whose positions are known to subarcsecond accuracy. Our success with this method suggests that a large fraction of the sources in submm surveys have extremely faint optical/NIR ($`K=2122`$) counterparts and hence cannot be followed up with optical spectroscopy. However, redshift estimations can be made for these sources using the submm-to-radio ratios. We find that the detected sources fall in the same $`z=13`$ range as the spectroscopically identified sources. While still preliminary, the results suggest that the submm population dominates the star formation in this redshift range by almost an order of magnitude over the mostly distinct populations selected in the optical/ultraviolet.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank our collaborators Dave Sanders, Ian Smail, Rob Ivison, Andrew Blain, and Jean-Paul Kneib for contributions to the work presented here.