Interferometric Observations of Powerful CO Emission from the three Submillimeter Galaxies at z=2.30, 2.51 and 3.35

We report IRAM millimeter interferometry of three z ∼ 2.4 to 3.4, SCUBA deep field galaxies. Our CO line observations confirm the rest-frame UV/optical redshifts, thus more than doubling the number of confirmed, published redshifts of the faint submm-population and proving their high- z nature. In all three sources our measurements of the intrinsic gas and dynamical mass are large (10 10 to 10 11 M ⊙ ). In at least two cases the data show that the submm sources are part of an interacting system. Together with recent information gathered in the X-ray, optical and radio bands our observations support the interpretation that the submm-population, at least the radio detected ones, consists of gas rich (gas to dynamical mass ratio ∼ 0.5) and massive, interacting starburst/AGN systems.