THE MOST LUMINOUS z ∼ 9–10 GALAXY CANDIDATES YET FOUND: THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION, COSMIC STAR-FORMATION RATE, AND THE FIRST MASS DENSITY ESTIMATE AT 500 Myr

By P. Oesch, R. Bouwens, G. Illingworth, I. Labbé, R. Smit, M. Franx, P. V. van Dokkum, Ivelina G. Momcheva, M. Ashby, G. Fazio and 8 more. 2013

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the discovery of four surprisingly bright (H160 ∼ 26–27 mag AB) galaxy candidates at z ∼ 9–10 in the complete HST CANDELS WFC3/IR GOODS-N imaging data, doubling the number of z ∼ 10 galaxy candidates that are known, just ∼500 Myr after the big bang. Two similarly bright sources are also detected in a reanalysis of the GOODS-S data set. Three of the four galaxies in GOODS-N are significantly detected at 4.5σ–6.2σ in the very deep Spitzer/IRAC 4.5 μm data, as is one of the GOODS-S candidates. Furthermore, the brightest of our candidates (at z = 10.2 ± 0.4) is robustly detected also at 3.6 μm (6.9σ), revealing a flat UV spectral energy distribution with a slope β = −2.0 ± 0.2, consistent with demonstrated trends with luminosity at high redshift. Thorough testing and use of grism data excludes known low-redshift contamination at high significance, including single emission-line sources, but as-yet unknown low redshift sources could provide an alternative solution given the surprising luminosity of these candidates. Finding such bright galaxies at z  ∼  9–10 suggests that the luminosity function for luminous galaxies might evolve in a complex way at z > 8. The cosmic star formation rate density still shows, however, an order-of-magnitude increase from z ∼ 10 to z ∼ 8 since the dominant contribution comes from low-luminosity sources. Based on the IRAC detections, we derive galaxy stellar masses at z ∼ 10, finding that these luminous objects are typically 109 M☉. This allows for a first estimate of the cosmic stellar mass density at z ∼ 10 resulting in M☉ Mpc−3 for galaxies brighter than MUV ∼ −18. The remarkable brightness, and hence luminosity, of these z ∼ 9–10 candidates will enable deep spectroscopy to determine their redshift and nature, and highlights the opportunity for the James Webb Space Telescope to map the buildup of galaxies at redshifts much earlier than z ∼ 10.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b7b7dd33d6556e96d11fc8f05e90ca88552849bc

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

In Instrumentation

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

Citations in the corpus

• THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY REST-FRAME ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OVER THE FIRST TWO BILLION YEARS (2014, methodology): “The integrated luminosity density (from −23 to −17) is ∼30% higher than that published in Oesch et al. (2013).”
• Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs (2018, background): “This is often the case for high redshift galaxies (e.g.,Bouwens et al. 2014; Smit et al. 2014; Bowler et al. 2015; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Oesch et al. 2014), and will be common for earlyuniverse galaxy populations to be studied by JWST (unless accompanied by observations made by ALMA).”
• REIONIZATION AFTER PLANCK: THE DERIVED GROWTH OF THE COSMIC IONIZING EMISSIVITY NOW MATCHES THE GROWTH OF THE GALAXY UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY (2015, methodology): “The greater depths of probes for z = 6–10 galaxies provided greater confidence that galaxies could provide the necessary reservoir of photons to reionize the universe (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2010, 2011, 2015 [B15]; Bunker et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2010, 2013; Ellis et al. 2013).”
• A REMARKABLY LUMINOUS GALAXY AT Z = 11.1 MEASURED WITH HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE GRISM SPECTROSCOPY (2016, methodology): “…et al. 2015b; McLure et al. 2013; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Bradley et al. 2014; Schmidt et al. 2014) and even a small sample of z ∼ 9−11 candidates (Oesch et al. 2013, 2014, 2015a; Ellis et al. 2013; Zheng et al. 2012; Coe et al. 2013; Zitrin et al. 2014; Bouwens et al. 2015a; McLeod et al.…”
• New redshift z ≃ 9 galaxies in the Hubble Frontier Fields: implications for early evolution of the UV luminosity density (2014, background): “This conclusion contrasts somewhat with that reached by Oesch et al. (2013) who Table 2.”
• 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, methodology): “…which is the limiting luminosity to which z ∼ 7 and z ∼ 10 galaxies can be found in current probes (Schenker et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013; Bouwens et al. 2015). b We adopt Td = ((1+z)/2.5) 0.32(35K) for the evolution following Bethermin et al. (2015).”
• Lyα EMISSION FROM A LUMINOUS z = 8.68 GALAXY: IMPLICATIONS FOR GALAXIES AS TRACERS OF COSMIC REIONIZATION (2015, background): “…years through the photometric discovery of large numbers of high-redshift galaxies in both deep and gravitationally-lensed fields observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (e.g. Ellis et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Bradley et al. 2014; Oesch et al. 2014; Zheng et al. 2014; Bouwens et al. 2015b).”
• UV LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 4 TO z ∼ 10: 10,000 GALAXIES FROM HST LEGACY FIELDS (2014, background): “These parameters are also consistent with the 10× evolution in volume density that Oesch et al. (2013, 2014) find from z ∼ 10 to z ∼ 8.”