1. The impact of medium-width bands on the selection, and subsequent luminosity function measurements, of high-z galaxies
- Author
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Adams, N. J., Austin, D., Harvey, T., Conselice, C. J., Trussler, J. A. A., Li, Q., Westcott, L., Ferreira, L., Rusakov, V., and Goolsby, C. M.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies - Abstract
New, ultra-deep medium-width photometric coverage with JWST's NIRCam instrument provides the potential for much improved photo-z reliability at high redshifts. In this study, we conduct a systematic analysis of the JADES Origins Field, which contains 14 broad- and medium-width near-infrared bands, to assess the benefits of medium band photometry on high-z sample completeness and contamination rates. Using imaging with depths of AB mag $29.8-30.35$, we conduct an experiment to observe how high-z selections differ when images are artificially degraded or bands are removed. In parallel, the same experiments are conducted on simulated catalogues from the JAGUAR semi-analytic model to examine if the behaviour from observations can be replicated. We find sample completeness is high ($80\%+$) and contamination low ($<4\%$) when in the $10\sigma+$ regime, even without the use of any medium-width bands. The addition of medium-width bands leads to notable increases in completeness ($\sim10\%$) but multiple bands are required to improve contamination rates due to the small redshift ranges over which they probe strong emission lines. Incidents of Balmer-Lyman degeneracy increase in the $5-7\sigma$ regime and this can be replicated in both simulated catalogues and degraded real data. We measure the faint-end of the UV LF at $8.5
- Published
- 2025