Interferometric Observations of Powerful Co Emission from Three Submillimeter Galaxies at Z = 2.39, 2.51 and 3.35

We report IRAM Plateau de Bure, 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 submillimeter population and proving their high-z nature. In all three sources our measurements of the intrinsic gas and dynami-cal mass are large (10 10 to 10 11 M ⊙). In at least two cases the data show that the submillimeter 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 consists of gas rich (gas to dynamical mass ratio ∼0.5) and massive, composite starburst/AGN systems, which are undergoing a major burst of star formation and are evolving into m *-galaxies.