Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Yuchen Guo
Shardha Jogee
Steven L. Finkelstein
Zilei Chen
Eden Wise
Micaela B. Bagley
Guillermo Barro
Stijn Wuyts
Dale D. Kocevski
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Elizabeth J. McGrath
Henry C. Ferguson
Bahram Mobasher
Mauro Giavalisco
Ray A. Lucas
Jorge A. Zavala
Jennifer M. Lotz
Norman A. Grogin
Marc Huertas-Company
Jesús Vega-Ferrero
Abstract： Stellar bars are key drivers of secular evolution in galaxies and can be effectively studied using rest-frame near-infrared (NIR) images, which trace the underlying stellar mass and are less impacted by dust and star formation than rest-frame UV or optical images. We leverage the power of {\it{JWST}} CEERS NIRCam images to present the first quantitative identification and characterization of stellar bars at $z>1$ based on rest-frame NIR F444W images of high resolution (~1.3 kpc at z ~ 1-3). We identify stellar bars in these images using quantitative criteria based on ellipse fits. For this pilot study, we present six examples of robustly identified bars at $z>1$ with spectroscopic redshifts, including the two highest redshift bars at ~2.136 and 2.312 quantitatively identified and characterized to date. The stellar bars at $z$ ~ 1.1-2.3 presented in our study have projected semi-major axes of ~2.9-4.3 kpc and projected ellipticities of ~0.41-0.53 in the rest-frame NIR. The barred host galaxies have stellar masses ~ $ 1 \times 10^{10}$ to $2 \times 10^{11}$ $M_{\odot}$, star formation rates of ~ 21-295 $M_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, and several have potential nearby companions. Our finding of bars at $z$ ~1.1-2.3 demonstrates the early onset of such instabilities and supports simulations where bars form early in massive dynamically cold disks. It also suggests that if these bars at lookback times of 8-10 Gyr survive out to present epochs, bar-driven secular processes may operate over a long time and have a significant impact on some galaxies by z ~ 0.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Steven L. Finkelstein
Micaela B. Bagley
Henry C. Ferguson
Stephen M. Wilkins
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Casey Papovich
L. Y. Aaron Yung
Pablo Arrabal Haro
Peter Behroozi
Mark Dickinson
Dale D. Kocevski
Anton M. Koekemoer
Rebecca L. Larson
Aurelien Le Bail
Alexa M. Morales
Pablo G. Perez-Gonzalez
Denis Burgarella
Romeel Dave
Michaela Hirschmann
Rachel S. Somerville
Abstract： We present an investigation into the first 500 Myr of galaxy evolution from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. CEERS, one of 13 JWST ERS programs, targets galaxy formation from z~0.5 to z>10 using several imaging and spectroscopic modes. We make use of the first epoch of CEERS NIRCam imaging, spanning 35.5 sq. arcmin, to search for candidate galaxies at z>9. Following a detailed data reduction process implementing several custom steps to produce high-quality reduced images, we perform multi-band photometry across seven NIRCam broad and medium-band (and six Hubble broadband) filters focusing on robust colors and accurate total fluxes. We measure photometric redshifts and devise a robust set of selection criteria to identify a sample of 26 galaxy candidates at z~9-16. These objects are compact with a median half-light radius of ~0.5 kpc. We present an early estimate of the z~11 rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function, finding that the number density of galaxies at M_UV ~ -20 appears to evolve very little from z~9 to z~11. We also find that the abundance (surface density [arcmin^-2]) of our candidates exceeds nearly all theoretical predictions. We explore potential implications, including that at z>10 star formation may be dominated by top-heavy initial mass functions, which would result in an increased ratio of UV light per unit halo mass, though a complete lack of dust attenuation and/or changing star-formation physics may also play a role. While spectroscopic confirmation of these sources is urgently required, our results suggest that the deeper views to come with JWST should yield prolific samples of ultra-high-redshift galaxies with which to further explore these conclusions.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Jorge A. Zavala
Veronique Buat
Caitlin M. Casey
Denis Burgarella
Steven L. Finkelstein
Micaela B. Bagley
Laure Ciesla
Emanuele Daddi
Mark Dickinson
Henry C. Ferguson
Maximilien Franco
E. F. Jim'enez-Andrade
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Anton M. Koekemoer
Aurélien Le Bail
E. J. Murphy
Casey Papovich
Sandro Tacchella
Stephen M. Wilkins
Itziar Aretxaga
Abstract： Lyman Break Galaxy (LBG) candidates at z>10 are rapidly being identified in JWST/NIRCam observations. Due to the (redshifted) break produced by neutral hydrogen absorption of rest-frame UV photons, these sources are expected to drop out in the bluer filters while being well detected in redder filters. However, here we show that dust-enshrouded star-forming galaxies at lower redshifts (z<7) may also mimic the near-infrared (near-IR) colors of z>10 LBGs, representing potential contaminants in LBG candidate samples. First, we analyze CEERS-DSFG-1, a NIRCam dropout undetected in the F115W and F150W filters but detected at longer wavelengths. Combining the JWST data with (sub)millimeter constraints, including deep NOEMA interferometric observations, we show that this source is a dusty star-forming galaxy (DSFG) at z~5.1. We also present a tentative 2.6sigma SCUBA-2 detection at 850um around a recently identified z~16 LBG candidate in the same field and show that, if the emission is real and associated with this candidate, the available photometry is consistent with a z~5 dusty galaxy with strong nebular emission lines despite its blue near-IR colors. Further observations on this candidate are imperative to mitigate the low confidence of this tentative submillimeter emission and its positional uncertainty. Our analysis shows that robust (sub)millimeter detections of NIRCam dropout galaxies likely imply z=4-6 redshift solutions, where the observed near-IR break would be the result of a strong rest-frame optical Balmer break combined with high dust attenuation and strong nebular line emission, rather than the rest-frame UV Lyman break. This provides evidence that DSFGs may contaminate searches for ultra high-redshift LBG candidates from JWST observations.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Micaela B. Bagley
Steven L. Finkelstein
Anton M. Koekemoer
Henry C. Ferguson
Pablo Arrabal Haro
Mark Dickinson
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Casey Papovich
Pablo G. Pérez-González
Nor Pirzkal
Rachel S. Somerville
Christopher N. A. Willmer
Guang Yang
L. Y. Aaron Yung
Adriano Fontana
Andrea Grazian
Norman A. Grogin
Michaela Hirschmann
Lisa J. Kewley
Allison Kirkpatrick
Abstract： We present the data release and data reduction process for the Epoch 1 NIRCam observations for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS). These data consist of NIRCam imaging in six broadband filters (F115W, F150W, F200W, F277W, F356W and F444W) and one medium band filter (F410M) over four pointings, obtained in parallel with primary CEERS MIRI observations (Yang et al. in prep). We reduced the NIRCam imaging with the JWST Calibration Pipeline, with custom modifications and reduction steps designed to address additional features and challenges with the data. Here we provide a detailed description of each step in our reduction and a discussion of future expected improvements. Our reduction process includes corrections for known pre-launch issues such as 1/f noise, as well as in-flight issues including snowballs, wisps, and astrometric alignment. Many of our custom reduction processes were first developed with pre-launch simulated NIRCam imaging over the full 10 CEERS NIRCam pointings. We present a description of the creation and reduction of this simulated dataset in the Appendix. We provide mosaics of the real images in a public release, as well as our reduction scripts with detailed explanations to allow users to reproduce our final data products. These represent one of the first official public datasets released from the Directors Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) program.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Micaela B. Bagley
Nor Pirzkal
Steven L. Finkelstein
Casey Papovich
Danielle A. Berg
Jennifer M. Lotz
Gene C. K. Leung
Henry C. Ferguson
Anton M. Koekemoer
Mark Dickinson
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Dale D. Kocevski
Rachel S. Somerville
L. Y. Aaron Yung
Bren E. Backhaus
Caitlin M. Casey
Marco Castellano
Óscar A. Chávez Ortiz
Katherine Chworowsky
Isabella G. Cox
Abstract： We present the Next Generation Deep Extragalactic Exploratory Public (NGDEEP)
Survey, a deep slitless spectroscopic and imaging Cycle 1 JWST treasury survey
designed to constrain feedback mechanisms in low-mass galaxies across cosmic
time. NGDEEP targets the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) with NIRISS slitless
spectroscopy (f~1.2e-18 erg/s/cm^2, 5sigma) to measure metallicities and
star-formation rates (SFRs) for low-mass galaxies through the peak of the
cosmic SFR density (0.5
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Pablo G. Pérez-González
Guillermo Barro
Marianna Annunziatella
Luca Costantin
Ángela García-Argumánez
Elizabeth J. McGrath
Rosa M. Mérida
Jorge A. Zavala
Pablo Arrabal Haro
Micaela B. Bagley
Bren E. Backhaus
Peter Behroozi
Eric F. Bell
Véronique Buat
Antonello Calabrò
Caitlin M. Casey
Nikko J. Cleri
Rosemary T. Coogan
M. C. Cooper
Asantha R. Cooray
Abstract： The new capabilities that JWST offers in the near- and mid-infrared (IR) are
used to investigate in unprecedented detail the nature of optical/near-IR
faint, mid-IR bright sources, HST-dark galaxies among them. We gather JWST data
from the CEERS survey in the EGS, jointly with HST data, and analyze spatially
resolved optical-to-mid-IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) to estimate
both photometric redshifts in 2 dimensions and stellar populations properties
in a pixel-by-pixel basis. We select 138 galaxies with F150W-F356W>1.5 mag,
F356W<27.5 mag. The nature of these sources is threefold: (1) 71% are dusty
star-forming galaxies at 2
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Caitlin Rose
Brittany N. Vanderhoof
Elizabeth J. McGrath
Luca Costantin
Isabella G. Cox
L. Y. Aaron Yung
Dale D. Kocevski
Stijn Wuyts
Henry C. Ferguson Brett H. Andrews
Micaela B. Bagley
Steven L. Finkelstein
Ricardo O. Amorin
Pablo Arrabal Haro
Bren E. Backhaus
Peter Behroozi
Laura Bisigello
Antonello Calabro
Caitlin M. Casey
Rosemary T. Coogan
Abstract： We present a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the morphological and structural properties of a large sample of galaxies at z=3-9 using early JWST CEERS NIRCam observations. Our sample consists of 850 galaxies at z>3 detected in both CANDELS HST imaging and JWST CEERS NIRCam images to enable a comparison of HST and JWST morphologies. Our team conducted a set of visual classifications, with each galaxy in the sample classified by three different individuals. We also measure quantitative morphologies using the publicly available codes across all seven NIRCam filters. Using these measurements, we present the fraction of galaxies of each morphological type as a function of redshift. Overall, we find that galaxies at z>3 have a wide diversity of morphologies. Galaxies with disks make up a total of 60\% of galaxies at z=3 and this fraction drops to ~30% at z=6-9, while galaxies with spheroids make up ~30-40% across the whole redshift range and pure spheroids with no evidence for disks or irregular features make up ~20%. The fraction of galaxies with irregular features is roughly constant at all redshifts (~40-50%), while those that are purely irregular increases from ~12% to ~20% at z>4.5. We note that these are apparent fractions as many selection effects impact the visibility of morphological features at high redshift. The distributions of S\'ersic index, size, and axis ratios show significant differences between the morphological groups. Spheroid Only galaxies have a higher S\'ersic index, smaller size, and higher axis ratio than Disk/Irregular galaxies. Across all redshifts, smaller spheroid and disk galaxies tend to be rounder. Overall, these trends suggest that galaxies with established disks and spheroids exist across the full redshift range of this study and further work with large samples at higher redshift is needed to quantify when these features first formed.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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