Accelerated formation of ultra-massive galaxies in the first billion years

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Xiao, Mengyuan; Oesch, Pascal A.; Elbaz, David; Bing, Longji; Nelson, Erica J.; Weibel, Andrea; Illingworth, Garth D.; van Dokkum, Pieter; Naidu, Rohan P.; Daddi, Emanuele; Bouwens, Rychard J.; Matthee, Jorryt; Wuyts, Stijn; Chisholm, John; Brammer, Gabriel; Dickinson, Mark; Magnelli, Benjamin; Leroy, Lucas; Schaerer, Daniel; Herard-Demanche, Thomas; Lim, Seunghwan; Barrufet, Laia; Endsley, Ryan; Fudamoto, Yoshinobu; Gomez-Guijarro, Carlos; Gottumukkala, Rashmi; Labbe, Ivo; Magee, Dan; Marchesini, Danilo; Maseda, Michael; Qin, Yuxiang; Reddy, Naveen A.; Shapley, Alice; Shivaei, Irene; Shuntov, Marko; Stefanon, Mauro; Whitaker, Katherine E.; Wyithe, J. Stuart B.
• 署名单位: University of Geneva; University of Copenhagen; Niels Bohr Institute; Universite Paris Saclay; CEA; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite Paris Cite; University of Sussex; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; Yale University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Leiden University; Leiden University - Excl LUMC; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich; University of Bath; University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; University of Cambridge; University of Cambridge; Waseda University; National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) - Japan; National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ); Swinburne University of Technology; Tufts University; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Melbourne; University of California System; University of California Riverside; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Arizona; University of Valencia; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); Universidad de Cantabria; CSIC - Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (IFCA); University of Valencia; University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-4229
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08094-5
• 发表日期: 2024-11-14
• 关键词: star-formation; high-redshift; luminosity function; stellar; dust; halo; population; bright

摘要

Recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed an unexpected abundance of massive-galaxy candidates in the early Universe, extending further in redshift and to lower luminosity than what had previously been found by submillimetre surveys1-6. These JWST candidates have been interpreted as challenging the Lambda cold dark-matter cosmology (where Lambda is the cosmological constant)7-9, but, so far, these studies have mostly relied on only rest-frame ultraviolet data and have lacked spectroscopic confirmation of their redshifts10-16. Here we report a systematic study of 36 massive dust-obscured galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts between 5 and 9 from the JWST FRESCO survey. We find no tension with the Lambda cold dark-matter model in our sample. However, three ultra-massive galaxies (logM star/M circle dot greater than or similar to 11.0, where M star is the stellar mass and M circle dot is the mass of the Sun) require an exceptional fraction of 50 per cent of baryons converted into stars-two to three times higher than the most efficient galaxies at later epochs. The contribution from an active galactic nucleus is unlikely because of their extended emission. Ultra-massive galaxies account for as much as 17 per cent of the total cosmic star-formation-rate density17 at redshifts between about five and six. A study of 36 massive galaxies at redshifts between 5 and 9 from the JWST FRESCO survey finds that galaxy formation of the most massive galaxies is 2-3 times higher than the most efficient galaxies at later epochs.