New redshift z ≃ 9 galaxies in the Hubble Frontier Fields: implications for early evolution of the UV luminosity density

By D. McLeod, R. McLure, J. Dunlop, Brant Robertson, Richard S. Ellis, Thomas Targett. 2014

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the results of a new search for galaxies at redshift z ≃ 9 in the first two Hubble Frontier Fields with completed HST WFC3/IR and ACS imaging. To ensure robust photometric redshift solutions, and to minimize incompleteness, we confine our search to objects with H_160 30 mag (within a 0.5-arcsec diameter aperture), and insist on detections in both H_160 and J_140. The result is a survey covering an effective area (after accounting for magnification) of 10.9 arcmin2, which yields 12 galaxies at 8.4 8.4 sources reported by Zheng et al. In the MACSJ0416.1−240 cluster field, we report five objects, and explain why each of these eluded detection or classification as z ≃ 9 galaxies in the published searches of the shallower CLASH data. Finally, we uncover four z ≃ 9 galaxies from the MACSJ0416.1−240 parallel field. Based on the published magnification maps, we find that only one of these 12 galaxies is likely boosted by more than a factor of 2 by gravitational lensing. Consequently, we are able to perform a fairly straightforward reanalysis of the normalization of the z ≃ 9 UV galaxy luminosity function as explored previously in the HUDF12 programme. We conclude that the new data strengthen the evidence for a continued smooth decline in UV luminosity density (and hence star formation rate density) from z ≃ 8 to 9, contrary to recent reports of a marked drop-off at these redshifts. This provides further support for the scenario in which early galaxy evolution is sufficiently extended to explain cosmic reionization.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08a42b34d8f6ed1d115d9cbfb0baca4960ec757d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. Hopkins
4. P. Oesch
5. R. Bouwens
6. J. Dunlop
7. G. Illingworth
8. P. V. van Dokkum

In Instrumentation

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. P. Oesch
3. J. Dunlop
4. R. Bouwens
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. G. Illingworth
7. I. Labbé
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• The evolution of the galaxy UV luminosity function at redshifts z ≃ 8 – 15 from deep JWST and ground-based near-infrared imaging (2022, background): “3 support the conclusion of McLeod et al. (2015, 2016) (in line with the long-standing analytical prediction of Hernquist & Springel (2003)), that 𝜌UV continues to display a steady, exponential decline with increasing redshift out to at least 𝑧 ' 12.”
• ARE ULTRA-FAINT GALAXIES AT z = 6–8 RESPONSIBLE FOR COSMIC REIONIZATION? COMBINED CONSTRAINTS FROM THE HUBBLE FRONTIER FIELDS CLUSTERS AND PARALLELS (2015, background): “…Finkelstein et al. (2014) at z = 4 − 8, Bouwens et al. (2015b) at z = 10, 17 the relative escape fraction the ratio between the fraction of escaping Lyman continuum photons and the fraction of escaping photons at 1500 Å (Steidel et al. 2001) McLeod et al. (2015) and Oesch et al. (2014) at z ∼ 9.”
• ALMA SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD: THE INFRARED EXCESS OF UV-SELECTED z = 2–10 GALAXIES AS A FUNCTION OF UV-CONTINUUM SLOPE AND STELLAR MASS (2016, background): “Rough constraints now exist on the star formation rate density to z ∼ 10 (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2011; Ellis et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2014, 2015; Bouwens et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2015; Laporte et al. 2016).”
• Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) (2016, background): “8 (Schenker et al. 2013; Bouwens et al. 2015b) and are pushing deeper (e.g. McLeod et al. 2015), but producing a consistent ionization history requires broad extrapolations to lower-mass galaxies and ad hoc assumptions about the escape fraction of ionizing photons and the faint-end cutoff of…”
• CONTRASTING GALAXY FORMATION FROM QUANTUM WAVE DARK MATTER, ψDM, WITH ΛCDM, USING PLANCK AND HUBBLE DATA (2015, background): “Currently, the behavior of the UV luminosity density at >z 8 is hotly debated with evidence of an accelerated decline at >z 8 by B15b but with a counter claim by McLeod et al. (2015) for the HFF with a reliance on parametric lens modeling.”
• PAPER-64 CONSTRAINTS ON REIONIZATION: THE 21 cm POWER SPECTRUM AT z = 8.4 (2015, background): “…find to the amount of heating possible given the currently observed star formation rates in high-redshift galaxy populations (Bouwens et al. 2014; McLeod et al. 2015) and assumptions about the relationship between star formation rates and X-ray luminosities (Furlanetto et al. 2006; Pritchard &…”
• Consistent modelling of the meta-galactic UV background and the thermal/ionization history of the intergalactic medium (2018, background): “(15) of Madau & Dickinson (2014), and reproduces recent results in the range 4 ∼< z ∼< 10 (Bowler et al. 2015; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Ishigaki et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2016).”
• Conditions for Reionizing the Universe with a Low Galaxy Ionizing Photon Escape Fraction (2019, result): “We compare this SFR density to the observations of Oesch et al. (2013, 2014), Finkelstein et al. (2015a), Bouwens et al. (2015b), and McLeod et al. (2015), as well as the literature compilation “reference” values from F16.”
• Full-data Results of Hubble Frontier Fields: UV Luminosity Functions at z ∼ 6–10 and a Consistent Picture of Cosmic Reionization (2017, methodology): “Many groups study the properties of high-redshift galaxies using a part of the HFF data (Atek et al. 2015a,b; Zheng et al. 2014; Coe et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2015; Ishigaki et al. 2015, 2016; Kawamata et al. 2015, 2016; Livermore et al. 2017; Bouwens et al. 2017a,b; McLeod et al. 2015, 2016).”
• REIONIZATION AFTER PLANCK: THE DERIVED GROWTH OF THE COSMIC IONIZING EMISSIVITY NOW MATCHES THE GROWTH OF THE GALAXY UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY (2015, methodology): “Note. a The evolution of the UV luminosity density to −17 and −17.7 mag (as used by Bouwens et al. 2011; Ellis et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013, 2014, 2015; McLeod et al. 2015) is included for contrast with the evolution seen to much fainter limits and also for completeness.”
• Early Results from GLASS-JWST. III. Galaxy Candidates at z ∼9–15 (2022, methodology): “Galaxies at higher redshifts have been generated according to observed UV LFs over z∼5-10 (McLeod et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2018; Bouwens et al. 2021) and randomly associating to each object a template from a library based on Bruzual & Charlot (2003, BC03 hereafter) models with metallicity=0.02,0.2…”
• A deep ALMA image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2016, background): “…our inventory of unobscured star formation which, certainly at high redshift, is dominated by large numbers of low-mass galaxies with individual starformation rates SFR ' 1 M yr−1 (e.g. McLure et al. 2013; Bouwens et al. 2015; Bowler et al. 2015; Finkelstein et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2015).”
• Detection of the Far-infrared [O iii] and Dust Emission in a Galaxy at Redshift 8.312: Early Metal Enrichment in the Heart of the Reionization Era (2018, unknown): “…the photo-z is well constrained by six independent studies to be = - +z 8.478phot 0.056 0.062 (Infante et al. 2015), - +8.57 0.4 0.3 (Laporte et al. 2015), 8.42 (Laporte et al. 2016), - +8.6 0.1 0.1 (McLeod et al. 2015), 8.66 (Castellano et al. 2016), and - +8.4 0.9 0.9 (Kawamata et al. 2016).”
• Radiation Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn: X-Rays from Compact Binaries (2016, unknown): “…in Figure 1, this is an updated version of the formula given in Equation (15) of Madau & Dickinson (2014) that better reproduces a number of recent 4 ∼ < z ∼< 10 results (Bowler et al. 2015; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Ishigaki et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2015; McLeod et al. 2016).”