CEERS Key Paper. IV. A Triality in the Nature of HST-dark Galaxies

Pérez-González, Pablo G.; Barro, Guillermo; Annunziatella, Marianna; Costantin, Luca; García-Argumánez, Ángela; McGrath, Elizabeth J.; Mérida, Rosa M.; Zavala, Jorge A.; Arrabal Haro, Pablo; Bagley, Micaela B.; Backhaus, Bren E.; Behroozi, Peter; Bell, Eric F.; Bisigello, Laura; Buat, Véronique; Calabrò, Antonello; Casey, Caitlin M.; Cleri, Nikko J.; Coogan, Rosemary T.; Cooper, M. C.; Cooray, Asantha R.; Dekel, Avishai; Dickinson, Mark; Elbaz, David; Ferguson, Henry C.; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Fontana, Adriano; Franco, Maximilien; Gardner, Jonathan P.; Giavalisco, Mauro; Gómez-Guijarro, Carlos; Grazian, Andrea; Grogin, Norman A.; Guo, Yuchen; Huertas-Company, Marc; Jogee, Shardha; Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.; Kewley, Lisa J.; Kirkpatrick, Allison; Kocevski, Dale D.; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Long, Arianna S.; Lotz, Jennifer M.; Lucas, Ray A.; Papovich, Casey; Pirzkal, Nor; Ravindranath, Swara; Somerville, Rachel S.; Tacchella, Sandro; Trump, Jonathan R.; Wang, Weichen; Wilkins, Stephen M.; Wuyts, Stijn; Yang, Guang; Aaron Yung, L. Y.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal

Advertised on:
3
2023
Number of authors
55
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
73
Refereed citations
44
Description
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, with HST-dark galaxies among them. We gather JWST data from the CEERS survey in the Extended Groth Strip, jointly with HST data, and analyze spatially resolved optical-to-mid-IR spectral energy distributions to estimate photometric redshifts in two dimensions and stellar population properties on a pixel-by-pixel basis for red galaxies detected by NIRCam. We select 138 galaxies with F150W - F356W > 1.5 mag and F356W < 27.5 mag. The nature of these sources is threefold: (1) 71% are dusty star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at 2 < z < 6 with $9\lt \mathrm{log}{M}_{\star }/{M}_{\odot }\lt 11$ and a variety of specific SFRs (<1 to >100 Gyr-1); (2) 18% are quiescent/dormant (i.e., subject to reignition/rejuvenation) galaxies (QGs) at 3 < z < 5, with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{\star }/{M}_{\odot }\sim 10$ and poststarburst mass-weighted ages (0.5-1.0 Gyr); and (3) 11% are strong young starbursts with indications of high equivalent width emission lines (typically, [O III]+Hβ) at 6 < z < 7 (XELG-z6) and $\mathrm{log}{M}_{\star }/{M}_{\odot }\sim 9.5$ . The sample is dominated by disk-like galaxies with remarkable compactness for XELG-z6 (effective radii smaller than 0.4 kpc). Large attenuations in SFGs, 2 < A(V) < 5 mag, are found within 1.5 times the effective radius, approximately 2 kpc, while QGs present A(V) ~ 0.2 mag. Our SED-fitting technique reproduces the expected dust emission luminosities of IR-bright and submillimeter galaxies. This study implies high levels of star formation activity between z ~ 20 and z ~ 10, where virtually 100% of our galaxies had already formed 108 M ⊙, 60% had assembled 109 M ⊙, and 10% up to 1010 M ⊙ (in situ or ex situ).
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Traces of Galaxy Formation: Stellar populations, Dynamics and Morphology

We are a large, diverse, and very active research group aiming to provide a comprehensive picture for the formation of galaxies in the Universe. Rooted in detailed stellar population analysis, we are constantly exploring and developing new tools and ideas to understand how galaxies came to be what we now observe.

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