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The essential signature of a massive starburst in a distant quasar

Nature volume 426, pages 636–638 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Observations of carbon monoxide emission in high-redshift (z > 2) galaxies indicate the presence of large amounts of molecular gas. Many of these galaxies contain an active galactic nucleus powered by accretion of gas onto a supermassive black hole, and a key question is whether their extremely high infrared luminosities result from the active galactic nucleus, from bursts of massive star formation (associated with the molecular gas), or both. In the Milky Way, high-mass stars form in the dense cores of interstellar molecular clouds, where gas densities are n(H2) > 105 cm-3 (refs 1, 2). Recent surveys show that virtually all galactic sites of high-mass star formation have similarly high densities3. The bulk of the cloud material traced by CO observations, however, is at a much lower density. For galaxies in the local Universe, the HCN molecule is an effective tracer of high-density molecular gas4. Here we report observations of HCN emission from the infrared-luminous ‘Cloverleaf’ quasar (at a redshift z = 2.5579). The HCN line luminosity indicates the presence of 10 billion solar masses of very dense gas, an essential feature of an immense starburst, which contributes, together with the active galactic nucleus it harbours, to its high infrared luminosity.

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Figure 1: HCN(J = 1–0) channel maps from the Cloverleaf observations obtained with the NRAO Very Large Array.
Figure 2: Spectrum of HCN(J = 1–0) emission observed in the Cloverleaf together with the observed9 spectrum of CO(J = 7–6), scaled down by a factor of 200.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Downes for discussions. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is operated by Associated Universities, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. P.V.B. thanks Columbia University and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris for hospitality during this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, 11794, USA

    P. Solomon

  2. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Virginia, 22903, Charlottesville, USA

    P. Vanden Bout

  3. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box 0, Socorro, 87801, New Mexico, USA

    C. Carilli

  4. Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, 300 rue de la Piscine, Domaine Universitaire, 38406, Saint Martin d'Hères, France

    M. Guelin

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  1. P. Solomon
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Correspondence to P. Solomon.

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Solomon, P., Vanden Bout, P., Carilli, C. et al. The essential signature of a massive starburst in a distant quasar. Nature 426, 636–638 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02149

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