Logo del repository
  1. Home
 
Opzioni

An extremely young massive clump forming by gravitational collapse in a primordial galaxy

Zanella A
•
Daddi E
•
Le Floc'h E
altro
Vignali C
2015
  • journal article

Periodico
NATURE
Abstract
When cosmic star formation history reaches a peak (at about redshift z approximate to 2), galaxies vigorously fed by cosmic reservoirs(1,2) are dominated by gas(3,4) and contain massive star-forming clumps(5,6), which are thought to form by violent gravitational instabilities in highly turbulent gas-rich disks(7,8). However, a clump formation event has not yet been observed, and it is debated whether clumps can survive energetic feedback from young stars, and afterwards migrate inwards to form galaxy bulges(9-12). Here we report the spatially resolved spectroscopy of a bright off-nuclear emission line region in a galaxy at z = 1.987. Although this region dominates star formation in the galaxy disk, its stellar continuum remains undetected in deep imaging, revealing an extremely young (less than ten million years old) massive clump, forming through the gravitational collapse of more than one billion solarmasses of gas. Gas consumption in this young clump is more than tenfold faster than in the host galaxy, displaying high star-formation efficiency during this phase, in agreement with our hydrodynamic simulations. The frequency of older clumps with similar masses(13), coupled with our initial estimate of their formation rate (about 2.5 per billion years), supports long lifetimes (about 500 million years), favouring models in which clumps survive feedback and grow the bulges of present-day galaxies.
DOI
10.1038/nature14409
WOS
WOS:000354040900030
SCOPUS
2-s2.0-84929075051
Archivio
http://hdl.handle.net/11368/2956963
Diritti
metadata only access
Web of Science© citazioni
39
Data di acquisizione
Jun 17, 2022
google-scholar
Get Involved!
  • Source Code
  • Documentation
  • Slack Channel
Make it your own

DSpace-CRIS can be extensively configured to meet your needs. Decide which information need to be collected and available with fine-grained security. Start updating the theme to match your nstitution's web identity.

Need professional help?

The original creators of DSpace-CRIS at 4Science can take your project to the next level, get in touch!

Realizzato con Software DSpace-CRIS - Estensione mantenuta e ottimizzata da 4Science

  • Impostazioni dei cookie
  • Informativa sulla privacy
  • Accordo con l'utente finale
  • Invia il tuo Feedback