Confirmation of the effectiveness of sub-mm source redshift estimation based on rest-frame radio to FIR photometry

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  • 1 September 2004
Abstract
We present a comparison between the published optical, IR and CO spectroscopic redshifts of 16 (sub-)mm galaxies and their photometric redshifts as derived from long-wavelength (radio-mm-FIR) photometric data. We undertake this comparison both with our already published redshift predictions, and then with updated estimates which incorporate recently published mm-wavelength data. We find that the accuracy of redshifts derived for 13 galaxies with at least one robustly-determined colour in the radio-mm-FIR regime is dz = 0.30 (r.m.s.). This new analysis confirms that, despite recent claims to the contrary, photometric redshifts can be efficiently derived for sub-mm galaxies with a precision of dz < 0.5 using only the rest-frame FIR to radio wavelength data. This uncertainty takes into account the wide range of spectral energy distributions in the local galaxies that are used in an un-biased manner as templates in this analysis.

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