Spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies at $z\sim14$
Abstract
The first observations of JWST have revolutionized our understanding of the Universe by identifying for the first time galaxies at . In addition, the discovery of many luminous galaxies at Cosmic Dawn () has suggested that galaxies developed rapidly, in apparent tension with many standard models. However, most of these galaxies lack spectroscopic confirmation, so their distances and properties are uncertain. We present JADES JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies at redshifts of and . The spectra reveal ultraviolet continua with prominent Lyman- breaks but no detected emission lines. This discovery proves that luminous galaxies were already in place 300~million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected before JWST. The most distant of the two galaxies is unexpectedly luminous and is spatially resolved with a radius of 260 parsecs. Considering also the very steep ultraviolet slope of the second galaxy, we conclude that both are dominated by stellar continuum emission, showing that the excess of luminous galaxies in the early Universe cannot be entirely explained by accretion onto black holes. Galaxy formation models will need to address the existence of such large and luminous galaxies so early in cosmic history.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2405.18485,
title = {Spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies at $z\sim14$},
author = {Stefano Carniani and Kevin Hainline and Francesco D'Eugenio and Daniel J. Eisenstein and Peter Jakobsen and Joris Witstok and Benjamin D. Johnson and Jacopo Chevallard and Roberto Maiolino and Jakob M. Helton and Chris Willott and Brant Robertson and Stacey Alberts and Santiago Arribas and William M. Baker and Rachana Bhatawdekar and Kristan Boyett and Andrew J. Bunker and Alex J. Cameron and Phillip A. Cargile and Stéphane Charlot and Mirko Curti and Emma Curtis-Lake and Eiichi Egami and Giovanna Giardino and Kate Isaak and Zhiyuan Ji and Gareth C. Jones and Nimisha Kumari and Michael V. Maseda and Eleonora Parlanti and Pablo G. Pérez-González and Tim Rawle and George Rieke and Marcia Rieke and Bruno Rodríguez Del Pino and Aayush Saxena and Jan Scholtz and Renske Smit and Fengwu Sun and Sandro Tacchella and Hannah Übler and Giacomo Venturi and Christina C. Williams and Christopher N. A. Willmer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.18485},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
15 figures, 3 tables, published in Nature