The SPT 0311–58 system at z = 6.900 is an extremely massive structure within the reionization epoch and offers a chance to understand the formation of galaxies at an extreme peak in the primordial density field. We present 70 mas Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the dust continuum and [C ii] 158 μm emission in the central pair of galaxies and reach physical resolutions of ∼100–350 pc, among the most detailed views of any reionization-era system to date. The observations resolve the source into at least a dozen kiloparsec-size clumps. The global kinematics and high turbulent velocity dispersion within the galaxies present a striking contrast to recent claims of dynamically cold thin-disk kinematics in some dusty galaxies just 800 Myr later at z ∼ 4. We speculate that both gravitational interactions and fragmentation from massive parent disks have likely played a role in the overall dynamics and formation of clumps in the system. Each clump individually is comparable in mass to other 6 < z < 8 galaxies identified in rest-UV/optical deep field surveys, but with star formation rates elevated by a factor of ~3-5. Internally, the clumps themselves bear close resemblance to greatly scaled-up versions of virialized cloud-scale structures identified in low-redshift galaxies. Our observations are qualitatively similar to the chaotic and clumpy assembly within massive halos seen in simulations of high-redshift galaxies.

We investigate the fine-structure [C ii] line at 158 μm as a molecular gas tracer by analyzing the relationship between molecular gas mass (M mol) and [C ii] line luminosity (L [C II]) in 11,125 z ≃ 6 star-forming, main-sequence galaxies from the simba simulations, with line emission modeled by the Simulator of Galaxy Millimeter/Submillimeter Emission. Though most (∼50%–100%) of the gas mass in our simulations is ionized, the bulk (>50%) of the [C ii] emission comes from the molecular phase. We find a sublinear (slope 0.78 ± 0.01) log L [ C II ] – log M mol relation, in contrast with the linear relation derived from observational samples of more massive, metal-rich galaxies at z ≲ 6. We derive a median [C ii]-to-M mol conversion factor of α [C II] ≃ 18 M ⊙/L ⊙. This is lower than the average value of ≃30 M ⊙/L ⊙ derived from observations, which we attribute to lower gas-phase metallicities in our simulations. Thus, a lower, luminosity-dependent conversion factor must be applied when inferring molecular gas masses from [C ii] observations of low-mass galaxies. For our simulations, [C ii] is a better tracer of the molecular gas than CO J = 1–0, especially at the lowest metallicities, where much of the gas is CO-dark. We find that L [C II] is more tightly correlated with M mol than with star formation rate (SFR), and both the log L [ C II ] – log M mol and log L [ C II ] – log SFR relations arise from the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation. Our findings suggest that L [C II] is a promising tracer of the molecular gas at the earliest cosmic epochs.