Confirmation of the effectiveness of submm source redshift estimation based on rest-frame radio–FIR photometry

We present a comparison between the published optical, infrared (IR) and CO spectroscopic redshifts of 15 (sub)mm galaxies and their photometric redshifts as derived from long-wavelength (radio–mm–far-IR) photometric data. The redshift accuracy measured for 12 submillimetre (submm) galaxies with at least one robustly determined colour in the radio–mm–far-IR regime is  δ z ≈ 0.30 (rms)  . Despite the wide range of spectral energy distributions in the local galaxies that are used in an unbiased manner as templates, this analysis demonstrates that photometric redshifts can be efficiently derived for submm galaxies with a precision of  δ z < 0.5  using only the rest-frame far-IR to radio wavelength data.