The applicability of mid-IR and far-IR FSL as diagnostic tools of the ISM has received a boost thanks to the publication of samples of nearby galaxies observed with the infrared space observatory (ISO) and Herschel (e.g. Brauher et al. 2008; Farrah et al. 2013; Sargsyan et al. 2014; Kamenetzky et al. 2014; Cormier et al. 2015; Cigan et al. 2016; Herrera-Camus et al. 2016; Fernández-Ontiveros et al. 2016; Zhao et al. 2016; Díaz-Santos et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2018). At high redshift (z ≳ 1), the far-IR FSL conveniently shift into the (sub)millimetre atmospheric windows. The most popular line is clearly [CII] 158 μm, followed by the [CI] 370, 609 μm lines (e.g. Walter et al. 2011; Bothwell et al. 2017). Both single dish submillimetre telescopes and interferometers have also detected the [NII] 122 μm and 205 μm lines at high redshift (Ferkinhoff et al. 2011, 2015; Combes et al. 2012; Nagao et al. 2012; Decarli et al. 2012, 2014; Béthermin et al. 2016; Pavesi et al. 2016; Lu et al. 2017; Tadaki et al. 2019; Novak et al. 2019). After a slow start, the [OIII] 88 μm line is quickly becoming a popular line to confirm redshifts of galaxies in the epoch of reionization (z ≳ 6), where it shifts into the submillimetre atmospheric windows below 500 GHz (Ferkinhoff et al. 2010; Inoue et al. 2016; Carniani et al. 2017; Marrone et al. 2018; Vishwas et al. 2018; Hashimoto et al. 2018, 2019; Walter et al. 2018; Tamura et al. 2019; Tadaki et al. 2019; Novak et al. 2019). Deep Herschel/SPIRE spectroscopy has also revealed a number of FSL detections, either in individual objects (Valtchanov et al. 2011; Coppin et al. 2012; George et al. 2013; Uzgil et al. 2016; Rigopoulou et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2018), or in stacked spectra (Wardlow et al. 2017; Wilson et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2018). These include the only detections of the [OI] 63 μm line at high redshift reported thus far. This [OI]3P2−3P1 line is arguably the best tracer for the star-forming gas, as it traces the very dense (



n
crit
H


$ n^{\mathrm{H}}_{\mathrm{crit}} $


 = 5×105 cm−3) neutral gas (one caveat being the frequeny presence of self-absorption observed in local ultra-luminous IR galaxies, Rosenberg et al. 2015). Like the [CII] line, the [OI] 63 μm line also shows a “deficit” in the most luminous far-IR sources, though with a higher scatter (Graciá-Carpio et al. 2011; Cormier et al. 2015; Díaz-Santos et al. 2017). Surprisingly, this bright FSL has not been frequently observed with ALMA, probably because it is only observable in the highest frequency bands. At least as surprising is that the fainter, but more accessible [OI]3P1−3P0 transition at λrest = 145 μm (



n
crit
H


$ n^{H}_{\mathrm{crit}} $


 = 9.5×104 cm−3) has only recently been detected at high redshifts (Novak et al. 2019 report a tentative detection in a z = 7.5 quasar). Also in nearby galaxies, this [OI] 145 μm line has not been observed very frequently as in most cases, it is fainter than the nearby [CII] 158 μm line. After initial detections with ISO (Malhotra et al. 2001; Brauher et al. 2008), Herschel has now detected [OI] 145 μm in significant samples of nearby galaxies (Spinoglio et al. 2015; Cormier et al. 2015; Fernández-Ontiveros et al. 2016; Herrera-Camus et al. 2018), and recently in a z = 6.5 lensed quasar (Yang et al. 2019).
Citation: Ferkinhoff et al. 2011
Citation function: Background
Citation: Ferkinhoff et al. 2010
Citation function: Background