COALAS: CO ATCA Legacy Archive of Star-Forming Galaxies
The CO ATCA Legacy Archive of Star-Forming Galaxies (COALAS) project is an Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) large program (ID: C3181, PI: H. Dannerbauer). ATCA is the only southern telescope that can observe the ground-transition CO(1-0) at high-z, which is the best tracer of the overall molecular gas in galaxies. This project will observe ~640 hours with ATCA for cold molecular gas traced by CO(1-0) in high redshift cluster members and field galaxies, which are galaxies in the Spiderweb cluster at z=2.16 and ALESS galaxy sample at z~2 in the ECDFS field (Hodge et al. 2013), respectively.
We aim to
1) Compare the molecular gas content in different environments (protocluster vs. field galaxies);
2) Use the CO-luminosity to derive important physical properties of DSFGS;
3) Use the low-J CO emission as a crucial anchor for the CO-ladder mapped with with ALMA.
(Artist’s impression of a galaxy cluster in the early Universe. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.)