GBT24B-340

The Atomic Gas Content of Green Pea Galaxies

Abstract

Green Pea galaxies (GPs) are compact, low-mass, extreme starburst systems in the nearby Universe, which show strong emission lines that rival the stellar continuum in their total luminosity. Such strong line emission demands vigorous star formation. HST UV spectroscopy shows that GPs are the best analogs of the high-z galaxies that reionized the Universe, with many GPs showing high leakage of Ly-alpha and Lyman-continuum radiation. Our earlier Arecibo/GBT HI-21cm studies yield tentative evidence for bimodality in the HI richness of GPs, and for a low HI-21cm detection rate in GPs with high [OIII]/[OII] luminosity ratios, consistent with a higher Ly-alpha and Lyman-continuum leakage. However, the results are tentative due to the small number of HI-21cm detections. We propose to use the GBT L-band receiver to significantly increase the number of GPs with HI-21cm detections, by carrying out a search for HI-21cm emission from a sample of 34 GPs at z<0.035, selected uniformly from the J-PLUS survey, aiming to achieve a uniform HI mass sensitivity four times better than the median mass sensitivity of the Arecibo/GBT sample. We request a total of 92.5 hours for this project, including all overheads and calibration.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Archishman Khasnovis	Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Nissim Kanekar *	Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Sangeeta Malhotra	Arizona State University; Goddard Space Flight Center
James Rhoads	National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Arizona State University
John Pharo	Missouri at Columbia, University of; Potsdam, Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik

* indicates the PI