English

The Universe at z>10: Predictions for JWST from the UniverseMachine DR1

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-10-21 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to observe galaxies at z>10z>10 that are presently inaccessible. Here, we use a self-consistent empirical model, the UniverseMachine, to generate mock galaxy catalogues and lightcones over the redshift range z=015z=0-15. These data include realistic galaxy properties (stellar masses, star formation rates, and UV luminosities), galaxy-halo relationships, and galaxy-galaxy clustering. Mock observables are also provided for different model parameters spanning observational uncertainties at z<10z<10. We predict that Cycle 1 JWST surveys will very likely detect galaxies with M>107MM_*>10^7 M_\odot and/or M1500<17M_{1500}<-17 out to at least z13.5z\sim 13.5. Number density uncertainties at z>12z>12 expand dramatically, so efforts to detect z>12z>12 galaxies will provide the most valuable constraints on galaxy formation models. The faint-end slopes of the stellar mass/luminosity functions at a given mass/luminosity threshold steepen as redshift increases. This is because observable galaxies are hosted by haloes in the exponentially falling regime of the halo mass function at high redshifts. Hence, these faint-end slopes are robustly predicted to become shallower below current observable limits (M<107MM_\ast < 10^7M_\odot or M1500>17M_\mathrm{1500}>-17). For reionization models, extrapolating luminosity functions with a constant faint-end slope from M1500=17M_{1500}=-17 down to M1500=12M_{1500}=-12 gives the most reasonable upper limit for the total UV luminosity and cosmic star formation rate up to z12z\sim 12. We compare to three other empirical models and one semi-analytic model, showing that the range of predicted observables from our approach encompasses predictions from other techniques. Public catalogues and lightcones for common fields are available online.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.04988,
  title  = {The Universe at z>10: Predictions for JWST from the UniverseMachine DR1},
  author = {Peter Behroozi and Charlie Conroy and Risa H. Wechsler and Andrew Hearin and Christina C. Williams and Benjamin P. Moster and L. Y. Aaron Yung and Rachel S. Somerville and Stefan Gottlöber and Gustavo Yepes and Ryan Endsley},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.04988},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

17 pages, MNRAS submitted. Catalogs and lightcones available at https://www.peterbehroozi.com/data.html