An Atlas of Color-selected Quiescent Galaxies at z > 3 in Public JWST Fields
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: We present the results of a systematic search for candidate quiescent galaxies in the distant universe in 11 JWST fields with publicly available observations collected during the first 3 months of operations and covering an effective sky area of 1/4145 arcmin2. We homogeneously reduce the new JWST data and combine them with existing observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. We select a robust sample of 1/480 candidate quiescent and quenching galaxies at 3 < z < 5 using two methods: (1) based on their rest-frame UVJ colors, and (2) a novel quantitative approach based on Gaussian mixture modeling of the near-UV - U, U - V, and V - J rest-frame color space, which is more sensitive to recently quenched objects. We measure comoving number densities of massive (M ⋆ ≥ 1010.6 M ⊙) quiescent galaxies consistent with previous estimates relying on ground-based observations, after homogenizing the results in the literature with our mass and redshift intervals. However, we find significant field-to-field variations of the number densities up to a factor of 2-3, highlighting the effect of cosmic variance and suggesting the presence of overdensities of red quiescent galaxies at z > 3, as could be expected for highly clustered massive systems. Importantly, JWST enables the robust identification of quenching/quiescent galaxy candidates at lower masses and higher redshifts than before, challenging standard formation scenarios. All data products, including the literature compilation, are made publicly available.
Source: Figshare
Authors: F Valentino (16037294), G Brammer (16300742), KML Gould (18077665), V Kokorev (16274612), S Fujimoto (16313871), CK Jespersen (20946749), AP Vijayan (18077170), JR Weaver (18077506), K Ito (46342), M Tanaka (46344), O Ilbert (7755797), GE Magdis (18077464), KE Whitaker (18077716), AL Faisst (18077659), A Gallazzi (20956481), S Gillman (15786950), C Giménez-Arteaga (20956484), C Gómez-Guijarro (16290209), M Kubo (7710431), KE Heintz (7713044), M Hirschmann (18077218), P Oesch (7754411), M Onodera (16219574), F Rizzo (20946752), M Lee (87659), V Strait (20956487), S Toft (7754417)
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7074046918
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