Work

Exploring over 700 massive quiescent galaxies at

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Massive, high-redshift (z > 2) quiescent galaxies represent crucial tests of early galaxy formation and evolutionary mechanisms through their cosmic number densities and stellar mass functions (SMFs). We explore a sample of 743 massive ($ \rm M_* > 10^{9.5}\,M_\odot $) quiescent galaxies from z = 2 − 7 in over 800 arcmin2 of NIRCam imaging from a compilation of public JWST fields (with a total area > 5× previous JWST studies). We compute and report their cosmic number densities, stellar mass functions, and cosmic stellar mass density. We confirm a significant overabundance of massive quiescent galaxies relative to a range of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations and semi-analytic models (SAMs). We find that no simulations or SAMs accurately reproduce the SMF for massive quiescent galaxies at any redshift within the interval z = 2 − 5. This shows that none of these models’ feedback prescriptions are fully capturing high-z galaxy quenching, challenging the standard formation scenarios. We find a greater abundance of lower-mass ($ \rm M_* < 10^{10}\,M_\odot $) quiescent galaxies than has been previously found, highlighting the importance of specific-star-formation rate cuts rather than simple colour selection. We show the importance of this selection bias, alongside individual field-to-field variations caused by cosmic variance, in varying the observed quiescent galaxy SMF, especially at higher z. We also find a steeper increase in the cosmic stellar mass density for massive quiescent galaxies than has been seen previously, with ρ* ∝ (1 + z)−7.2 ± 0.3, indicating the dramatic increase in the importance of galaxy quenching within these epochs.

Source: Springer Link (Chiba Institute of Technology)

DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202555829/pdf

Authors: William M. Baker, Francesco Valentino, Claudia del P. Lagos, Kei Ito, Christian Kragh Jespersen, Rashmi Gottumukkala, Jens Hjorth, Danial Langeroodi, Aidan Sedgewick

Institutions: University of Copenhagen, DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark, Princeton University

Language: English

Topic: Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Villum Fonden, Space Telescope Science Institute, National Research Foundation, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Awards: G103270039, G1338664626, G1700342535, 深多波長データとJWSTによる遠方宇宙における星形成活動の終焉の解明, G256731684, Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), G4863782507, G5568641063, G6954859447

OpenAlex ID: W7111371446

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