TRICEPS. I. Tracing cold gas, dust, and stars at sub-kpc scales in massive star-forming galaxies at z = 4-5

@misc{lelli2026triceps,
  title = {{TRICEPS. I. Tracing cold gas, dust, and stars at sub-kpc scales in massive star-forming galaxies at z = 4-5}},
  author = {Federico Lelli and Lingrui Lin and Zhi-Yu Zhang and Cecilia Bacchini and Davide Bevacqua and Joe Bhangal and Marco Castellano and Carlos De Breuck and Giovanni Gandolfi and Allison W. S. Man and Antonino Marasco and Diego Paris and Borja Pérez-Díaz and Paola Santini},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.30375},
  eprint = {2609.30375},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.30375},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - TRICEPS. I. Tracing cold gas, dust, and stars at sub-kpc scales in massive star-forming galaxies at z = 4-5
AU  - Federico Lelli
AU  - Lingrui Lin
AU  - Zhi-Yu Zhang
AU  - Cecilia Bacchini
AU  - Davide Bevacqua
AU  - Joe Bhangal
AU  - Marco Castellano
AU  - Carlos De Breuck
AU  - Giovanni Gandolfi
AU  - Allison W. S. Man
AU  - Antonino Marasco
AU  - Diego Paris
AU  - Borja Pérez-Díaz
AU  - Paola Santini
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/24
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.30375
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.30375
AB  - We introduce the TRICEPS (Tracing Resolved Ionized Carbon Emission in Primeval Systems) survey. TRICEPS focuses on a sample of 16 massive galaxies at z = 4 - 5 with top-quality data: (i) ALMA band-7 observations of the [CII]-158 micron line, tracing the cold gas distribution and kinematics at spatial resolutions of about 0.1" (~0.8 kpc), (ii) ALMA maps of the rest-frame 160 micron continuum emission, tracing the dust distribution at similar spatial resolutions, (iii) multi-band JWST images from NIRCam and MIRI, tracing the stellar mass distribution and star formation activity at spatial resolutions of 0.1"-0.2", and (iv) multi-line CO observations from ALMA and the VLA, including the CO(1-0) line, tracing the molecular gas content. In this first paper, we describe the TRICEPS scientific goals, the basic properties of the galaxy sample, and the ALMA band-7 observations. TRICEPS galaxies were selected based only on bright [CII] fluxes (>2 Jy km/s). They lie on the top-end of the star-forming main sequence at z = 4-5, having stellar masses between about 10^10.5-10^12 Msun and star-formation rates between about 100 - 3000 Msun/yr. To date, TRICEPS is the largest sample of galaxies at z = 4-5 for which the gas distribution and kinematics are exceptionally well resolved: on average, 46 resolution elements per galaxy with signal-to-noise ratio higher than 3. By survey design, half of the TRICEPS targets are in galaxy pairs; clear signs of tidal interactions are present in three of the four pairs. In all galaxies, the [CII] velocity fields display regular rotation, albeit the interacting galaxies tend to be somewhat more disturbed. The TRICEPS observations suggest that regular rotation is ubiquitous among massive star-forming galaxies when the Universe was less than ~1.5 Gyr old.
ER  -