An Atlas of Color-selected Quiescent Galaxies at $z>3$ in Public $JWST$ Fields
We present the results of a systematic search for candidate quiescent galaxies in the distant Universe in eleven $JWST$ fields with publicly available observations collected during the first three months of operations and covering an effective sky area of $\sim145$ arcmin$^2$. We homogeneously reduc...
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Zusammenfassung: | We present the results of a systematic search for candidate quiescent
galaxies in the distant Universe in eleven $JWST$ fields with publicly
available observations collected during the first three months of operations
and covering an effective sky area of $\sim145$ arcmin$^2$. We homogeneously
reduce the new $JWST$ data and combine them with existing observations from the
$Hubble\,Space\,Telescope$. We select a robust sample of $\sim80$ candidate
quiescent and quenching galaxies at $3 < z < 5$ using two methods: (1) based on
their rest-frame $UVJ$ colors, and (2) a novel quantitative approach based on
Gaussian Mixture Modeling of the $NUV-U$, $U-V$, and $V-J$ rest-frame color
space, which is more sensitive to recently quenched objects. We measure
comoving number densities of massive ($M_\star\geq 10^{10.6} M_\odot$)
quiescent galaxies consistent with previous estimates relying on ground-based
observations, after homogenizing the results in the literature with our mass
and redshift intervals. However, we find significant field-to-field variations
of the number densities up to a factor of $2-3$, highlighting the effect of
cosmic variance and suggesting the presence of overdensities of red quiescent
galaxies at $z>3$, as it could be expected for highly clustered massive
systems. Importantly, $JWST$ enables the robust identification of
quenching/quiescent galaxy candidates at lower masses and higher redshifts than
before, challenging standard formation scenarios. All data products, including
the literature compilation, are made publicly available. |
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DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2302.10936 |