A massive galaxy that formed its stars at z ≈ 11

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt

  • Karl Glazebrook
  • Themiya Nanayakkara
  • Corentin Schreiber
  • Claudia Lagos
  • Lalitwadee Kawinwanichakij
  • Colin Jacobs
  • Harry Chittenden
  • Brammer, Gabriel
  • Glenn G. Kacprzak
  • Ivo Labbe
  • Danilo Marchesini
  • Z. Cemile Marsan
  • Pascal A. Oesch
  • Casey Papovich
  • Rhea Silvia Remus
  • Kim Vy H. Tran
  • James Esdaile
  • Angel Chandro-Gomez
The formation of galaxies by gradual hierarchical co-assembly of baryons and cold dark matter halos is a fundamental paradigm underpinning modern astrophysics1,2 and predicts a strong decline in the number of massive galaxies at early cosmic times3,4,5. Extremely massive quiescent galaxies (stellar masses of more than 1011 M⊙) have now been observed as early as 1–2 billion years after the Big Bang6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. These galaxies are extremely constraining on theoretical models, as they had formed 300–500 Myr earlier, and only some models can form massive galaxies this early12,14. Here we report on the spectroscopic observations with the JWST of a massive quiescent galaxy ZF-UDS-7329 at redshift 3.205 ± 0.005. It has eluded deep ground-based spectroscopy8, it is significantly redder than is typical and its spectrum reveals features typical of much older stellar populations. Detailed modelling shows that its stellar population formed around 1.5 billion years earlier in time (z ≈ 11) at an epoch when dark matter halos of sufficient hosting mass had not yet assembled in the standard scenario4,5. This observation may indicate the presence of undetected populations of early galaxies and the possibility of significant gaps in our understanding of early stellar populations, galaxy formation and the nature of dark matter.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftNature
Vol/bind628
Udgave nummer8007
Sider (fra-til)277-281
Antal sider5
ISSN0028-0836
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
K.G. thanks R. Abraham for assistance in fetching data on z = 0 comparison galaxies from Canadian archives and J. Brinchmann for inspiring discussions on the 0.94 μm bump. This work is based on observations made with JWST, which is run by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programme 2565. We thank the JWST team for all their hard work, which made this great observatory possible. We thank M. Maseda and A. Strom for helpful discussions during the data reduction process. T.N., K.G. and C.J. acknowledge support from an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (FL180100060). This work has benefited from funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (Project No. CE170100013). C.P. acknowledges generous support from Marsha L. and Ralph F. Schilling and from the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. The Cosmic Dawn Center is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant No. DNRF140). P.O. is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project Grant No. 200020_207349). This work received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2024.

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