Dust temperture and the submillimetre-radio flux density ratio as a redshift indicator for distant galaxies
Abstract
It is difficult to identify the distant galaxies selected in existing submillimetre-wave surveys, because their positions are known at best to only several arcseconds. Centimetre-wave VLA observations are required in order to determine positions to sub-arcsecond accuracy, and so to allow reliable optical identifications to be made. Carilli & Yun (1999) pointed out that the ratio of the radio to submillimetre-wave flux densities provides a redshift indicator for dusty star-forming galaxies, when compared with the tight correlation between the far-infrared and radio flux densities observed in low-redshift galaxies. This method does provide a useful, albeit imprecise, indication of the distance to a submillimetre-selected galaxy. Unfortunately, it does not provide an unequivocal redshift estimate, as the degeneracy between the effects of increasing the redshift of a galaxy and decreasing its dust temperature is not broken.Keywords
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