Gas conditions of a star-formation selected sample in the first billion years

We present Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) observations of the [O iii] 88 emission of a sample of thirteen galaxies at to 7.6 selected as [C ii]-emitting companion sources of quasars. To disentangle the origins of the luminous Oxygen line in the Universe, we looked at emission-line galaxies that are selected through an excellent star-formation tracer [C ii] with star-formation rates between 9 and 162. Direct observations reveal [O iii] emission in just a single galaxy (), and a stacked image shows no [O iii] detection, providing deep upper limits on the ratios in the Universe (at). While the fidelity of this sample is high, no obvious optical/near-infrared counterpart is seen in the JWST imaging available for four galaxies. Additionally accounting for low-z CO emitters, line stacking shows that our sample-wide result remains robust: The enhanced reported in the first billion years of the Universe is likely due to the selection towards bright, blue Lyman-break galaxies with high surface star-formation rates or young stellar populations. The deep upper limit on the rest-frame 90 μm continuum emission (Jy at), implies a low average dust temperature (K) and high-dust mass (). As more normal galaxies are explored in the early Universe, synergy between JWST and ALMA is fundamental to further investigate the ISM properties of the a broad range of samples of high-z galaxies.