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arXiv · 2609.21604

ALMA Chemical Evolution (ACE) survey: an overview -- extending dust and gas inference to low metallicities at cosmic noon

Irene Shivaei·Gergő Popping·Leindert A. Boogaard·Alexandra Pope·Ivanna Langan·Roxana Popescu·Nikki N. Geesink·Manuel Solimano·Caitlin M. Casey·Maximilien Franco·Melanie Kaasinen·Bahram Mobasher·Desika Narayanan·Pablo G. Pérez-González·Naveen Reddy·Ryan Sanders
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Abstract

The baryon cycle governs the exchange of gas, metals, and dust between galaxies and their environments, but simultaneous constraints on these constituents remain scarce beyond z~1. The ALMA Chemical Evolution (ACE) survey is a Cycle 11 ALMA Large Program designed to address this by studying the molecular gas, dust, and metal content of sub-solar metallicity at cosmic noon. ACE consists of CO(3-2) and dust continuum observations of 25 galaxies at z=2.0-2.5 with robust gas-phase metallicity measurements spanning ~35% to 83% of solar metallicity. The survey approximately doubles the number of unlensed main-sequence galaxies at z>1 with CO, dust-continuum and metallicity measurements and extends such studies to almost an order of magnitude lower stellar masses and metallicities than previous surveys. The ACE observations yield 17 CO detections and 17 Band 7 continuum (rest-frame ~270um) detections. CO detectability correlates most strongly with metallicity and stellar mass, while dust continuum detectability is more closely linked to star formation rate (SFR) and infrared luminosity. Using the ACE measurements, we derive a new empirical scaling relation linking CO(3-2) luminosity to stellar mass, SFR, and metallicity, providing a practical benchmark for estimating molecular gas content in low-mass, low-metallicity galaxies. The survey reveals several particularly intriguing systems, including some of the lowest-metallicity CO and dust detections currently known at z>1, galaxies with extreme gas and dust fractions, and systems exhibiting offsets between stellar, dust, and molecular gas emission. ACE provides the first comprehensive view of the interplay between molecular gas, dust, metals, and star formation in sub-solar metallicity galaxies at cosmic noon, enabling direct tests of models for baryon cycling, chemical enrichment, and dust evolution during the peak epoch of galaxy assembly.

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Irene Shivaei, Gergő Popping, Leindert A. Boogaard, Alexandra Pope, Ivanna Langan, Roxana Popescu, Nikki N. Geesink, Manuel Solimano, Caitlin M. Casey, Maximilien Franco, Melanie Kaasinen, Bahram Mobasher, Desika Narayanan, Pablo G. Pérez-González, Naveen Reddy, Ryan Sanders. 2026-09-18. ALMA Chemical Evolution (ACE) survey: an overview -- extending dust and gas inference to low metallicities at cosmic noon. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21604

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