CEERS Key Paper. IV. A Triality in the Nature of HST-dark Galaxies Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Abstract The new capabilities that JWST offers in the near- and mid-infrared (IR) are used to investigate in unprecedented detail the nature of optical/near-IR-faint, mid-IR-bright sources, with HST-dark galaxies among them. We gather JWST data from the CEERS survey in the Extended Groth Strip, jointly with HST data, and analyze spatially resolved optical-to-mid-IR spectral energy distributions to estimate photometric redshifts in two dimensions and stellar population properties on a pixel-by-pixel basis for red galaxies detected by NIRCam. We select 138 galaxies with F150W F356W > 1.5 mag and F356W < 27.5 mag. The nature of these sources is threefold: (1) 71% are dusty star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at 2 < z < 6 with 9 < log M / M < 11 and a variety of specific SFRs (<1 to >100 Gyr1); (2) 18% are quiescent/dormant (i.e., subject to reignition/rejuvenation) galaxies (QGs) at 3 < z < 5, with log M / M 10 and poststarburst mass-weighted ages (0.51.0 Gyr); and (3) 11% are strong young starbursts with indications of high equivalent width emission lines (typically, [O iii]+H) at 6 < z < 7 (XELG-z6) and log M / M 9.5 . The sample is dominated by disk-like galaxies with remarkable compactness for XELG-z6 (effective radii smaller than 0.4 kpc). Large attenuations in SFGs, 2 < A(V) < 5 mag, are found within 1.5 times the effective radius, approximately 2 kpc, while QGs present A(V) 0.2 mag. Our SED-fitting technique reproduces the expected dust emission luminosities of IR-bright and submillimeter galaxies. This study imp

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS

altmetric score

  • 56.68

author list (cited authors)

  • Perez-Gonzalez, P. G., Barro, G., Annunziatella, M., Costantin, L., Garcia-Argumanez, A., McGrath, E. J., ... Aaron Yung, L. Y.

citation count

  • 5

complete list of authors

  • Perez-Gonzalez, Pablo G||Barro, Guillermo||Annunziatella, Marianna||Costantin, Luca||Garcia-Argumanez, Angela||McGrath, Elizabeth J||Merida, Rosa M||Zavala, Jorge A||Haro, Pablo Arrabal||Bagley, Micaela B||Backhaus, Bren E||Behroozi, Peter||Bell, Eric F||Bisigello, Laura||Buat, Veronique||Calabro, Antonello||Casey, Caitlin M||Cleri, Nikko J||Coogan, Rosemary T||Cooper, MC||Cooray, Asantha R||Dekel, Avishai||Dickinson, Mark||Elbaz, David||Ferguson, Henry C||Finkelstein, Steven L||Fontana, Adriano||Franco, Maximilien||Gardner, Jonathan P||Giavalisco, Mauro||Gomez-Guijarro, Carlos||Grazian, Andrea||Grogin, Norman A||Guo, Yuchen||Huertas-Company, Marc||Jogee, Shardha||Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S||Kewley, Lisa J||Kirkpatrick, Allison||Kocevski, Dale D||Koekemoer, Anton M||Long, Arianna S||Lotz, Jennifer M||Lucas, Ray A||Papovich, Casey||Pirzkal, Nor||Ravindranath, Swara||Somerville, Rachel S||Tacchella, Sandro||Trump, Jonathan R||Wang, Weichen||Wilkins, Stephen M||Wuyts, Stijn||Yang, Guang||Aaron Yung, LY

publication date

  • March 2023