The Fundamental Plane of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z ∼ 2

Stockmann, Mikkel; Jørgensen, Inger; Toft, Sune; Conselice, Christopher J.; Faisst, Andreas L.; Margalef-Bentabol, Berta; Gallazzi, Anna; Zibetti, S.; Brammer, Gabriel; Gómez-Guijarro, Carlos; Hirschmann, Michaela; Lagos, Claudia del P.; Valentino, F.; Zabl, Johannes

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abce66

“…Over the last decade, incredibly dedicated effort and investment on ground-based 8-10 m telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have repeatedly pushed the spectroscopic confirmation of the existence of quiescent galaxies to z ∼ 4, when the universe was only 1.5 Gyr old, progressively challenging theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution (Gobat et al 2012;Marsan et al 2015;Glazebrook et al 2017;Kado-Fong et al 2017;Forrest et al 2020a). Multiobject deep near-IR (NIR) (i.e., rest-frame optical) spectroscopy of 2 < z < 4 quiescent galaxies has allowed for the measurements of their stellar populations and star formation histories (Schreiber et al 2018;Belli et al 2019;D'Eugenio et al 2020D'Eugenio et al , 2021Estrada-Carpenter et al 2020;Forrest et al 2020aForrest et al , 2020bSaracco et al 2020;Valentino et al 2020), kinematics, sizes, andmorphologies (van de Sande et al 2013;Belli et al 2017;Hill et al 2016;Newman et al 2018;Tanaka et al 2019;Estrada-Carpenter et al 2020;Saracco et al 2020;Esdaile et al 2021;Stockmann et al 2021;Forrest et al 2022), metallicity (Morishita et al 2019;Saracco et al 2020) , hereafter corresponding to around a third of the characteristic stellar mass of the galaxy stellar mass function; e.g., Muzzin et al 2013) quiescent galaxy at z > 2 has been spectroscopically confirmed yet, preventing the exploration of quenching mechanisms to the low-stellarmass regime at cosmic noon. For example, while some form of feedback generally attributed to active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is supposed for the quenching of galaxies at the massive end, it is unclear whether AGN feedback can also operate in low-mass galaxies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Results from GLASS-JWST. IX. First Spectroscopic Confirmation of Low-mass Quiescent Galaxies at z > 2 with NIRISS

Marchesini

¹

,

Brammer

²

,

Morishita

³

et al. 2023

ApJL

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How passive galaxies form, and the physical mechanisms which prevent star formation over long timescales, are some of the most outstanding questions in understanding galaxy evolution. The properties of quiescent galaxies over cosmic time provide crucial information to identify the quenching mechanisms. Passive galaxies have been confirmed and studied out to z ∼ 4, but all of these studies have been limited to massive systems (mostly with log ( M star / M ⊙ ) > 10.8 ). Using JWST-NIRISS grism slitless spectroscopic data from the GLASS-JWST Early Release Science program, we present spectroscopic confirmation of two quiescent galaxies at z spec = 2.650 − 0.006 + 0.004 and z spec = 2.433 − 0.016 + 0.032 (3σ errors) with stellar masses of log ( M star / M ⊙ ) = 10.59 − 0.05 + 0.11 and log ( M star / M ⊙ ) = 10.07 − 0.03 + 0.06 (corrected for magnification factors of μ = 2.0 and μ = 2.1, respectively). The latter represents the first spectroscopic confirmation of the existence of low-mass quiescent galaxies at cosmic noon, showcasing the power of JWST to identify and characterize this enigmatic population.

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“…Since the discovery of massive quiescent galaxies at z = 2-4 (Cimatti et al 2004(Cimatti et al , 2006van Dokkum et al 2004;Stockmann et al 2020;Valentino et al 2020), it has been hypothesised that their progenitors in the early Universe must be short-lived massive starbursts at z > 4 (Casey et al 2014;Toft et al 2014). Analysis of Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observations of far-infrared ultra-red sources has identified galaxies at z = 3-7 (Iono et al 2016;Oteo et al 2016Oteo et al , 2017Gómez-Guijarro et al 2018;Marrone et al 2018) with extreme infrared luminosities (log L IR (L ) > 13) and star Calibrated ALMA, JWST, and HST images of SPT0311-58 system images are also available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr (130.79.128.5) or via https:// cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/671/A105…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MIRI/JWST observations reveal an extremely obscured starburst in the z = 6.9 system SPT0311-58

Álvarez-Márquez¹,

Gómez²,

L.³

et al. 2023

A&A

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Luminous infrared starbursts in the early Universe are thought to be the progenitors of massive quiescent galaxies identified at redshifts 2–4. Using the Mid-IRfrared Instrument (MIRI) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we present mid-infrared sub-arcsec imaging and spectroscopy of such a starburst: the slightly lensed hyper-luminous infrared system SPT0311-58 at z = 6.9. The MIRI IMager (MIRIM) and Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) observations target the stellar (rest-frame 1.26 μm emission) structure and ionised (Paα and Hα) medium on kpc scales in the system. The MIRI observations are compared with existing ALMA far-infrared continuum and [C II]158μm imaging at a similar angular resolution. Even though the ALMA observations imply very high star formation rates (SFRs) in the eastern (E) and western (W) galaxies of the system, the Hα line is, strikingly, not detected in our MRS observations. This fact, together with the detection of the ionised gas phase in Paα, implies very high internal nebular extinction with lower limits (AV) of 4.2 (E) and 3.9 mag (W) as well as even larger values (5.6 (E) and 10.0 (W)) by spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting analysis. The extinction-corrected Paα lower limits of the SFRs are 383 and 230 M⊙ yr−1 for the E and W galaxies, respectively. This represents 50% of the SFRs derived from the [C II]158 μm line and infrared light for the E galaxy and as low as 6% for the W galaxy. The MIRIM observations reveal a clumpy stellar structure, with each clump having 3–5×109 M⊙ mass in stars, leading to a total stellar mass of 2.0 and 1.5×1010 M⊙ for the E and W galaxies, respectively. The specific star formation (sSFR) in the stellar clumps ranges from 25 to 59 Gyr−1, assuming a star formation with a 50–100 Myr constant rate. This sSFR is three to ten times larger than the values measured in galaxies of similar stellar mass at redshifts 6–8. Thus, SPT0311-58 clearly stands out as a starburst system when compared with typical massive star-forming galaxies at similar high redshifts. The overall gas mass fraction is Mgas/M* ∼ 3, similar to that of z ∼ 4.5–6 star-forming galaxies, suggesting a flattening of the gas mass fraction in massive starbursts up to redshift 7. The kinematics of the ionised gas in the E galaxy agrees with the known [C II] gas kinematics, indicating a physical association between the ionised gas and the cold ionised or neutral gas clumps. The situation in the W galaxy is more complex, as it appears to be a velocity offset by about +700 km s−1 in the Paα relative to the [C II] emitting gas. The nature of this offset and its reality are not fully established and require further investigation. The observed properties of SPT0311-58, such as the clumpy distribution at sub(kpc) scales and the very high average extinction, are similar to those observed in low- and intermediate-z luminous (E galaxy) and ultra-luminous (W galaxy) infrared galaxies, even though SPT0311-58 is observed only ∼800 Myr after the Big Bang. Such massive, heavily obscured clumpy starburst systems as SPT0311-58 likely represent the early phases in the formation of a massive high-redshift bulge, spheroids and/or luminous quasars. This study demonstrates that MIRI and JWST are, for the first time, able to explore the rest-frame near-infrared stellar and ionised gas structure of these galaxies, even during the Epoch of Reionization.

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The evolution of compact massive quiescent and star-forming galaxies derived from the Re–Rh and Mstar–Mh relations

Zanisi

¹

,

Shankar

²

,

Fu

³

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The mean size ( effective radius Re) of Massive Galaxies (MGs, Mstar > 1011.2M⊙) is observed to increase steadily with cosmic time. It is still unclear whether this trend originates from the size growth of individual galaxies (via, e.g., mergers and/or AGN feedback) or from the inclusion of larger galaxies entering the selection at later epochs (progenitor bias). We here build a data-driven, flexible theoretical framework to probe the structural evolution of MGs. We assign galaxies to dark matter haloes via stellar mass-halo mass (SMHM) relations with varying high-mass slopes and scatters σSMHM in stellar mass at fixed halo mass, and assign sizes to galaxies using an empirically-motivated, constant and linear relationship between Re and the host dark matter halo radius Rh. We find that: 1) the fast mean size growth of MGs is well reproduced independently of the shape of the input SMHM relation; 2) the numbers of compact MGs grow steadily until z ≳ 2 and fall off at lower redshifts, suggesting a lesser role of progenitor bias at later epochs; 3) a time-independent scatter σSMHM is consistent with a scenario in which compact starforming MGs transition into quiescent MGs in a few 108yr with a negligible structural evolution during the compact phase, while a scatter increasing at high redshift implies significant size growth during the starforming phase. A robust measurement of the size function of MGs at high redshift can set strong constraints on the scatter of the SMHM relation and, by extension, on models of galaxy evolution.

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The Fundamental Plane of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z ∼ 2

Cited by 6 publications

References 86 publications

Early Results from GLASS-JWST. IX. First Spectroscopic Confirmation of Low-mass Quiescent Galaxies at z > 2 with NIRISS

Early Results from GLASS-JWST. IX. First Spectroscopic Confirmation of Low-mass Quiescent Galaxies at z > 2 with NIRISS

MIRI/JWST observations reveal an extremely obscured starburst in the z = 6.9 system SPT0311-58

The evolution of compact massive quiescent and star-forming galaxies derived from the Re–Rh and Mstar–Mh relations

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