1. The Herschel Filament: a signature of the environmental drivers of galaxy evolution during the assembly of massive clusters at z=0.9
- Author
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Nathalie Ouellette, David Gilbank, Erica Ellingson, Michael D. Gladders, L. Felipe Barrientos, Tracy Webb, Kristen Coppin, Eiichi Egami, D.V. O'Donnell, Amalia Hicks, A. J. Faloon, James E. Geach, Howard K. C. Yee, and Renbin Yan
- Subjects
Physics ,Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Stellar mass ,Star formation ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Galaxy ,Luminosity ,Protein filament ,Space and Planetary Science ,Supercluster ,0103 physical sciences ,Galaxy formation and evolution ,Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Galaxy cluster ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
We have discovered a 2.5 Mpc (projected) long filament of infrared-bright galaxies connecting two of the three ~5x10^14 Msun clusters making up the RCS 2319+00 supercluster at z=0.9. The filament is revealed in a deep Herschel Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE) map that shows 250-500um emission associated with a spectroscopically identified filament of galaxies spanning two X-ray bright cluster cores. We estimate that the total (8-1000um) infrared luminosity of the filament is Lir~5x10^12 Lsun, which, if due to star formation alone, corresponds to a total SFR 900 Msun/yr. We are witnessing the scene of the build-up of a >10^15 Msun cluster of galaxies, seen prior to the merging of three massive components, each of which already contains a population of red, passive galaxies that formed at z>2. The infrared filament demonstrates that significant stellar mass assembly is taking place in the moderate density, dynamically active circumcluster environments of the most massive clusters at high-redshift, and this activity is concomitant with the hierarchical build-up of large scale structure., 5 pages, 3 figures, version resubmitted to ApJL after reviewer comments addressed
- Published
- 2012