We investigate the properties of a sample of 35 galaxies, detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) at 1.1 mm in the GOODS-ALMA field (area of 69 arcmin2, resolution = 0.60″, rms ≃ 0.18 mJy beam−1). Using the ultraviolet-to-radio deep multiwavelength coverage of the GOODS–South field, we fit the spectral energy distributions of these galaxies to derive their key physical properties. The galaxies detected by ALMA are among the most massive at z = 2−4 (M⋆, med = 8.5 × 1010 M⊙) and they are either starburst or located in the upper part of the galaxy star-forming main sequence. A significant portion of our galaxy population (∼40%), located at z ∼ 2.5 − 3, exhibits abnormally low gas fractions. The sizes of these galaxies, measured with ALMA, are compatible with the trend between the rest-frame 5000 Å size and stellar mass observed for z ∼ 2 elliptical galaxies, suggesting that they are building compact bulges. We show that there is a strong link between star formation surface density (at 1.1 mm) and gas depletion time: The more compact a galaxy’s star-forming region is, the shorter its lifetime will be (without gas replenishment). The identified compact sources associated with relatively short depletion timescales (∼100 Myr) are the ideal candidates to be the progenitors of compact elliptical galaxies at z ∼ 2.

Compact star formation appears to be generally common in dusty star-forming galaxies (SFGs). However, its role in the framework set by the scaling relations in galaxy evolution remains to be understood. In this work we follow up on the galaxy sample from the GOODS-ALMA 2.0 survey, an ALMA blind survey at 1.1 mm covering a continuous area of 72.42 arcmin2 using two array configurations. We derived physical properties, such as star formation rates, gas fractions, depletion timescales, and dust temperatures for the galaxy sample built from the survey. There exists a subset of galaxies that exhibit starburst-like short depletion timescales, but they are located within the scatter of the so-called main sequence of SFGs. These are dubbed starbursts in the main sequence and display the most compact star formation and they are characterized by the shortest depletion timescales, lowest gas fractions, and highest dust temperatures of the galaxy sample, compared to typical SFGs at the same stellar mass and redshift. They are also very massive, accounting for ∼60% of the most massive galaxies in the sample (log(M*/M⊙) > 11.0). We find trends between the areas of the ongoing star formation regions and the derived physical properties for the sample, unveiling the role of compact star formation as a physical driver of these properties. Starbursts in the main sequence appear to be the extreme cases of these trends. We discuss possible scenarios of galaxy evolution to explain the results drawn from our galaxy sample. Our findings suggest that the star formation rate is sustained in SFGs by gas and star formation compression, keeping them within the main sequence even when their gas fractions are low and they are presumably on the way to quiescence.

ANIR (Atacama Near InfraRed camera) is a near infrared camera for the University of Tokyo Atacama 1m telescope, installed at the summit of Co. Chajnantor (5,640 m altitude) in northern Chile. The high altitude and extremely low water vapor (PWV = 0.5 mm) of the site enable us to perform observation of hydrogen Paα emission line at 1.8751 µm. Since its first light observation in June 2009, we have been carrying out a Paα narrow-band imaging survey of nearby luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs), and have obtained Paα for 38 nearby LIRGs listed in AKARI/FIS-PSC at the velocity of recession between 2,800 km/s and 8,100 km/s. LIRGs are affected by a large amount of dust extinction (A V ∼ 3 mag), produced by their active star formation activities. Because Paα is the strongest hydrogen recombination line in the infrared wavelength ranges, it is a good and direct tracer of dust-enshrouded star forming regions, and enables us to probe the star formation activities in LIRGs. We find that LIRGs have two star-forming modes. The origin of the two modes probably come from differences between merging stage and/or star-forming process.

The primordial He abundance Y P is a powerful probe of cosmology. Currently, Y P is best determined by observations of metal-poor galaxies, while there are only a few known local extremely metal-poor (<0.1Z ⊙) galaxies (EMPGs) having reliable He/H measurements with He i λ10830 near-infrared (NIR) emission. Here we present deep Subaru NIR spectroscopy for 10 EMPGs. Combining the existing optical data, He/H values of 5 out of the 10 EMPGs are reliably derived by the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Adding the existing 3 EMPGs and 51 moderately metal-poor (0.1–0.4Z ⊙) galaxies with reliable He/H estimates, we obtain Y P = 0.2370 − 0.0034 + 0.0033 by linear regression in the (He/H) − (O/H) plane, where we increase the number of EMPGs from three to eight anchoring He/H of the most metal-poor gas in galaxies. Although our Y P measurement and previous measurements are consistent, our result is slightly (∼1σ) smaller due to our EMPGs. Including the existing primordial deuterium D P measurement, we constrain the effective number of neutrino species N eff and the baryon-to-photon ratio η showing ≳1–2σ tensions with the Standard Model and Planck Collaboration et al. (2020). Motivated by the tensions, we allow the degeneracy parameter of the electron neutrino ξ e , as well as N eff and η, to vary. We obtain ξ e = 0.05 − 0.02 + 0.03 , N eff = 3.11 − 0.31 + 0.34 , and η × 10 10 = 6.08 − 0.06 + 0.06 from the Y P and D P measurements with a prior of η taken from Planck Collaboration et al. Our constraints suggest a lepton asymmetry and allow for a high value of N eff within the 1σ level, which could mitigate the Hubble tension.