Can dusty Lyman break galaxies produce the submillimeter counts and background? Lessons from lensed Lyman break galaxies

摘要

Can the submillimeter counts and background be produced by applying a locallyderived extinction correction to the population of Lyman break galaxies? Weinvestigate the submillimeter emission of two strongly lensed Lyman breakgalaxies (MS1512+36-cB58 and MS1358+62-G1) and find that the procedure that isused to predict the submillimeter emission of the Lyman break galaxy populationoverpredicts the observed 850micron fluxes by up to a factor of 14. This resultcalls for caution in applying local correlations to distant galaxies. It alsoshows that large extinction corrections on Lyman break galaxies should beviewed with skepticism. It is concluded that the Lyman break galaxies maycontribute to the submillimeter background at the 25 to 50% level. The brightersubmillimeter galaxies making up the rest of the background are either notdetected in optical surveys, or if they are detected, their submillimeteremission cannot be reliably estimated from their rest-frame ultravioletproperties.