A population of faint, old, and massive quiescent galaxies at 3 &lt; z &lt; 4 revealed by JWST NIRSpec Spectroscopy

Nanayakkara, Themiya; Glazebrook, Karl; Jacobs, Colin; Brammer, Gabriel; Esdaile, James; Kacprzak, Glenn G.; Labbé, Ivo; Lagos, Claudia del P.; Marchesini, Danilo; Marsan, Z. Cemile; Nateghi, Hasti; Oesch, Pascal; Papovich, Casey; Remus, Rhea-Silvia; Tran, Kim‐Vy H.

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2212.11638

“…By contrast, the 13 other candidate members are faint and small. It is tempting to speculate whether these candidate members, if real, may have had their SFRs truncated below 10% of their peak star-forming episode, one definition of a quiescent galaxy (Nanayakkara et al 2022). Numerous NIRCam imaging studies have informed us that quiescent galaxies are more common than expected at z = 3-4, implying an early and relatively rapid buildup of stellar material in galaxies and/or an efficient conversion rate of gas to stars at early times (Nanayakkara et al 2022;Carnall et al 2023;Valentino et al 2023).…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is tempting to speculate whether these candidate members, if real, may have had their SFRs truncated below 10% of their peak star-forming episode, one definition of a quiescent galaxy (Nanayakkara et al 2022). Numerous NIRCam imaging studies have informed us that quiescent galaxies are more common than expected at z = 3-4, implying an early and relatively rapid buildup of stellar material in galaxies and/or an efficient conversion rate of gas to stars at early times (Nanayakkara et al 2022;Carnall et al 2023;Valentino et al 2023). A comprehensive investigation of the physical properties and star formation histories of these galaxies/candidates should uncover hints regarding their assembly and their connection to any larger galaxy overdensity.…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

The JWST PEARLS View of the El Gordo Galaxy Cluster and of the Structure It Magnifies

Frye

¹

,

Pascale

²

,

Foo

³

et al. 2023

ApJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The massive galaxy cluster El Gordo (z = 0.87) imprints multitudes of gravitationally lensed arcs onto James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images. Eight bands of NIRCam imaging were obtained in the “Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science” (“PEARLS”) program. Point-spread function–matched photometry across Hubble Space Telescope and NIRCam filters supplies new photometric redshifts. A new light-traces-mass lens model based on 56 image multiplicities identifies the two mass peaks and yields a mass estimate within 500 kpc of (7.0 ± 0.30) × 1014 M ⊙. A search for substructure in the 140 cluster members with spectroscopic redshifts confirms the two main mass components. The southeastern mass peak that contains the brightest cluster galaxy is more tightly bound than the northwestern one. The virial mass within 1.7 Mpc is (5.1 ± 0.60)×1014 M ⊙, lower than the lensing mass. A significant transverse velocity component could mean the virial mass is underestimated. We contribute one new member to the previously known z = 4.32 galaxy group. Intrinsic (delensed) positions of the five secure group members span a physical extent of ∼60 kpc. 13 additional candidates selected by spectroscopic/photometric constraints are small and faint, with a mean intrinsic luminosity ∼2.2 mag fainter than L *. NIRCam imaging admits a fairly wide range of brightnesses and morphologies for the group members, suggesting a more diverse galaxy population in this galaxy overdensity.

show abstract

“…Over the past few years, the existence of a population of quenched and quiescent galaxies (QGs) at redshifts z ∼ 3-4 (e.g., Fontana et al 2009;Spitler et al 2014;Straatman et al 2014) has been finally corroborated by the long sought after spectroscopic confirmations (Glazebrook et al 2017;Schreiber et al 2018aSchreiber et al , 2018bTanaka et al 2019;D'Eugenio et al 2020D'Eugenio et al , 2021Forrest et al 2020aForrest et al , 2020bValentino et al 2020;Kubo et al 2021;Nanayakkara et al 2022). The combination of spectra and deep photometry have allowed for a first assessment of the physical properties of the newly found early QGs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Atlas of Color-selected Quiescent Galaxies at z > 3 in Public JWST Fields

Valentino

¹

,

Brammer

²

,

Gould

³

et al. 2023

ApJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present the results of a systematic search for candidate quiescent galaxies in the distant universe in 11 JWST fields with publicly available observations collected during the first 3 months of operations and covering an effective sky area of ∼145 arcmin2. We homogeneously reduce the new JWST data and combine them with existing observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. We select a robust sample of ∼80 candidate quiescent and quenching galaxies at 3 < z < 5 using two methods: (1) based on their rest-frame UVJ colors, and (2) a novel quantitative approach based on Gaussian mixture modeling of the near-UV − U, U − V, and V − J rest-frame color space, which is more sensitive to recently quenched objects. We measure comoving number densities of massive (M ⋆ ≥ 1010.6 M ⊙) quiescent galaxies consistent with previous estimates relying on ground-based observations, after homogenizing the results in the literature with our mass and redshift intervals. However, we find significant field-to-field variations of the number densities up to a factor of 2–3, highlighting the effect of cosmic variance and suggesting the presence of overdensities of red quiescent galaxies at z > 3, as could be expected for highly clustered massive systems. Importantly, JWST enables the robust identification of quenching/quiescent galaxy candidates at lower masses and higher redshifts than before, challenging standard formation scenarios. All data products, including the literature compilation, are made publicly available.

show abstract

“…However, possibly due to observational constraints, the majority of the literature about quiescent galaxies has focused on low-redshift, high-mass sources (with some exceptions, e.g., Santini et al 2022;Weaver et al 2022;Looser et al 2023). The highestredshift quiescent/post-starburst galaxies to date are at z = 7. followed then by several quiescent galaxies at z ∼ 2-4 (Glazebrook et al 2017;Schreiber et al 2018;Forrest et al 2020;Valentino et al 2020;Nanayakkara et al 2022;Marchesini et al 2023), most with stellar masses 10 10 M e .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

An Extremely Compact, Low-mass Galaxy on its Way to Quiescence at z = 5.2

Strait

¹

,

Brammer

²

,

Muzzin

³

et al. 2023

ApJL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report the discovery of a low-mass z = 5.200 ± 0.002 galaxy that is in the process of ceasing its star formation. The galaxy, MACS0417-z5BBG, is multiply imaged with magnification factors ∼40 by the galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154, observed as part of the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS). Using observations of MACS0417-z5BBG with a JWST/NIRSpec Prism spectrum and NIRCam imaging, we investigate the mechanism responsible for the cessation of star formation of the galaxy and speculate about possibilities for its future. Using spectrophotometric fitting, we find a remarkably low stellar mass of M * = 4.3 ± 0.8 0.9 × 10 7 M ⊙ , less than 1% of the characteristic stellar mass at z ∼ 5. We measure a delensed rest-UV half-light radius in the source plane of 30 ± 5 7 pc and measure a star formation rate from Hα of 0.14 ± 0.12 0.17 M ⊙ yr−1. We find that under the assumption of a double power-law star formation history, MACS0417-z5BBG has seen a recent rise in star formation, peaking ∼10–30 Myr ago and declining precipitously since then. Together, these measurements reveal a low-mass, extremely compact galaxy which is in the process of ceasing star formation. We investigate the possibilities of mechanisms that have led to the cessation of star formation in MACS0417-z5BBG, considering stellar and active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback and environmental processes. We can likely rule out most environmental processes but leave open the possibility of a low-mass AGN that does not leave a broad-line imprint on the spectrum or that MACS0417-z5BBG could be a star-forming galaxy in the lull of a bursty star formation history.

show abstract

A population of faint, old, and massive quiescent galaxies at 3 < z < 4 revealed by JWST NIRSpec Spectroscopy

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

The JWST PEARLS View of the El Gordo Galaxy Cluster and of the Structure It Magnifies

The JWST PEARLS View of the El Gordo Galaxy Cluster and of the Structure It Magnifies

An Atlas of Color-selected Quiescent Galaxies at z > 3 in Public JWST Fields

An Extremely Compact, Low-mass Galaxy on its Way to Quiescence at z = 5.2

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About