Evidence for a clumpy, rotating gas disk in a submillimeter galaxy at z = 4

We present Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array observations of the CO(2-1) emission in the z = 4.05 submillimeter galaxy (SMG) GN20. These high-resolution data allow us to image the molecular gas at 1.3kpc resolution just 1.6Gyr after the big bang. The data reveal a clumpy, extended gas reservoir, 14 ± 4kpc in diameter, in unprecedented detail. A dynamical analysis shows that the data are consistent with a rotating disk of total dynamical mass 5.4 ± 2.4 × 1011 M⊙. We use this dynamical mass estimate to constrain the CO-to-H2 mass conversion factor (αCO), finding αCO = 1.1 ± 0.6 M⊙(K kms-1 pc2)-1. We identify five distinct molecular gas clumps in the disk of GN20 with masses a few percent of the total gas mass, brightness temperatures of 16-31K, and surface densities of >3200-4500 × (αCO/0.8) M⊙ pc-2. Virial mass estimates indicate they could be self-gravitating, and we constrain their CO-to-H2 mass conversion factor to be <0.2-0.7 M ⊙(K kms-1 pc2)-1. A multiwavelength comparison demonstrates that the molecular gas is concentrated in a region of the galaxy that is heavily obscured in the rest-frame UV/optical. We investigate the spatially resolved gas excitation and find that the CO(6-5)/CO(2-1) ratio is constant with radius, consistent with star formation occurring over a large portion of the disk. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of different fueling scenarios for SMGs. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.