1. Dusty Starbursts Masquerading as Ultra-high Redshift Galaxies in JWST CEERS Observations
- Author
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Jorge A. Zavala, Véronique Buat, Caitlin M. Casey, Steven L. Finkelstein, Denis Burgarella, Micaela B. Bagley, Laure Ciesla, Emanuele Daddi, Mark Dickinson, Henry C. Ferguson, Maximilien Franco, E. F. Jiménez-Andrade, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Anton M. Koekemoer, Aurélien Le Bail, E. J. Murphy, Casey Papovich, Sandro Tacchella, Stephen M. Wilkins, Itziar Aretxaga, Peter Behroozi, Jaclyn B. Champagne, Adriano Fontana, Mauro Giavalisco, Andrea Grazian, Norman A. Grogin, Lisa J. Kewley, Dale D. Kocevski, Allison Kirkpatrick, Jennifer M. Lotz, Laura Pentericci, Pablo G. Pérez-González, Nor Pirzkal, Swara Ravindranath, Rachel S. Somerville, Jonathan R. Trump, Guang Yang, L. Y. Aaron Yung, Omar Almaini, Ricardo O. Amorín, Marianna Annunziatella, Pablo Arrabal Haro, Bren E. Backhaus, Guillermo Barro, Eric F. Bell, Rachana Bhatawdekar, Laura Bisigello, Fernando Buitrago, Antonello Calabrò, Marco Castellano, Óscar A. Chávez Ortiz, Katherine Chworowsky, Nikko J. Cleri, Seth H. Cohen, Justin W. Cole, Kevin C. Cooke, M. C. Cooper, Asantha R. Cooray, Luca Costantin, Isabella G. Cox, Darren Croton, Romeel Davé, Alexander de la Vega, Avishai Dekel, David Elbaz, Vicente Estrada-Carpenter, Vital Fernández, Keely D. Finkelstein, Jonathan Freundlich, Seiji Fujimoto, Ángela García-Argumánez, Jonathan P. Gardner, Eric Gawiser, Carlos Gómez-Guijarro, Yuchen Guo, Timothy S. Hamilton, Nimish P. Hathi, Benne W. Holwerda, Michaela Hirschmann, Marc Huertas-Company, Taylor A. Hutchison, Kartheik G. Iyer, Anne E. Jaskot, Saurabh W. Jha, Shardha Jogee, Stéphanie Juneau, Intae Jung, Susan A. Kassin, Peter Kurczynski, Rebecca L. Larson, Gene C. K. Leung, Arianna S. Long, Ray A. Lucas, Benjamin Magnelli, Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha, Jasleen Matharu, Elizabeth J. McGrath, Daniel H. McIntosh, Aubrey Medrano, Emiliano Merlin, Bahram Mobasher, Alexa M. Morales, Jeffrey A. Newman, David C. Nicholls, Viraj Pandya, Marc Rafelski, Kaila Ronayne, Caitlin Rose, Russell E. Ryan, Paola Santini, Lise-Marie Seillé, Ekta A. Shah, Lu Shen, Raymond C. Simons, Gregory F. Snyder, Elizabeth R. Stanway, Amber N. Straughn, Harry I. Teplitz, Brittany N. Vanderhoof, Jesús Vega-Ferrero, Weichen Wang, Benjamin J. Weiner, Christopher N. A. Willmer, Stijn Wuyts, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation (AIM (UMR_7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112)), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité), Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg (ObAS), and Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Subjects
Astrofísica ,1ST BILLION YEARS ,Near infrared astronomy ,FOS: Physical sciences ,DEEP-FIELD-NORTH ,Starburst galaxies ,Millimeter astronomy ,ALMA SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY ,STAR-FORMING GALAXIES ,Galaxy photometry ,Dust continuum emission ,SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,MASSIVE GALAXIES ,Emission line galaxies ,Galaxies ,MULTIWAVELENGTH PROPERTIES ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,Lyman-break galaxies ,Luminous infrared galaxies ,Astronomía ,Space and Planetary Science ,[SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics] ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,High-redshift galaxies ,MILKY-WAY ,James Webb Space Telescope ,INTERSTELLAR DUST ,Submillimeter astronomy ,COSMOLOGY LEGACY SURVEY - 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 (z10 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., Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (updated to match the published version)
- Published
- 2023