ALMA 26 arcmin2 Survey of GOODS-S at 1 mm (ASAGAO) : Near-infrared-dark Faint ALMA Sources

We report detections of two 1.2 mm continuum sources (S 1.2 mm ∼ 0.6 mJy) without any counterparts in the deep H- and/or K-band image (i.e., K-band magnitude ≳26 mag). These near-infrared-dark faint millimeter sources are uncovered by ASAGAO, a deep and wide-field (≃26 arcmin2) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 1.2 mm survey. One has a red IRAC (3.6 and 4.5 μm) counterpart, and the other has been independently detected at 850 and 870 μm using SCUBA2 and ALMA Band 7, respectively. Their optical-to-radio spectral energy distributions indicate that they can lie at z ≳ 3–5 and can be in the early phase of massive galaxy formation. Their contribution to the cosmic star formation rate density is estimated to be ∼1 × 10‑3 M ⊙ yr‑1 Mpc‑3 if they lie somewhere in the redshift range of z ∼ 3–5. This value can be consistent with, or greater than, that of bright submillimeter galaxies (S 870 μm > 4.2 mJy) at z ∼ 3–5. We also uncover three more candidate near-infrared-dark faint ALMA sources without any counterparts (S 1.2 mm ∼ 0.45–0.86 mJy). These results show that an unbiased ALMA survey can reveal the dust-obscured star formation activities, which were missed in previous deep optical/near-infrared surveys.