An extreme ram-pressure stripping event in a protocluster at redshift 4.3

@misc{zhou2026extreme,
  title = {{An extreme ram-pressure stripping event in a protocluster at redshift 4.3}},
  author = {Dazhi Zhou and Scott C. Chapman and Manuel Aravena and Roger Deane and Anthony H. Gonzalez and Ryley Hill and Nicholas LeVar and Matthew A. Malkan and Adam Muzzin and Nan Zhang and Kedar A. Phadke and Vismaya R. Pillai and Manuel Solimano and Justin S. Spilker and Nikolaus Sulzenauer and Joaquin D. Vieira and David Vizgan and George C. P. Wang and Axel Weiss},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.18229},
  eprint = {2606.18229},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.18229},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - An extreme ram-pressure stripping event in a protocluster at redshift 4.3
AU  - Dazhi Zhou
AU  - Scott C. Chapman
AU  - Manuel Aravena
AU  - Roger Deane
AU  - Anthony H. Gonzalez
AU  - Ryley Hill
AU  - Nicholas LeVar
AU  - Matthew A. Malkan
AU  - Adam Muzzin
AU  - Nan Zhang
AU  - Kedar A. Phadke
AU  - Vismaya R. Pillai
AU  - Manuel Solimano
AU  - Justin S. Spilker
AU  - Nikolaus Sulzenauer
AU  - Joaquin D. Vieira
AU  - David Vizgan
AU  - George C. P. Wang
AU  - Axel Weiss
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/21
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.18229
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.18229
AB  - In the nearby Universe, the environment plays a crucial role in suppressing star formation in dense regions. In particular, ram-pressure stripping (RPS) is a major mechanism for removing gas from galaxies in clusters, occurring when galaxies travel through a dense hot atmosphere and leave trailing gaseous wakes. By depleting the cold gas reservoir, RPS can drive outside-in quenching and is therefore thought to be an important route for transforming cluster galaxies. At earlier times, however, the hot atmosphere in protoclusters is expected to be immature, so environmental effects are commonly assumed to be dominated by gravitational interactions. Here we report ALMA and JWST observations of SPT2349−56-C26 (hereafter C26), a massive galaxy experiencing an extreme RPS event in the SPT2349−56 protocluster at z = 4.3. More than half of the [CII]-traced cold gas lies outside its stellar body, with the emission peak offset by 6 kpc. These observations show that RPS can remove most of the cold gas from massive galaxies in dense protocluster cores as early as z = 4.3, providing a direct hydrodynamic pathway for environmental quenching at z > 4.
ER  -