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Not-so-little Red Dots: Two Massive and Dusty Starbursts at z ∼ 5–7 Pushing the Limits of Star Formation Discovered by JWST in the COSMOS-Web Survey

Authors :
Fabrizio Gentile
Caitlin M. Casey
Hollis B. Akins
Maximilien Franco
Jed McKinney
Edward Berman
Olivia R. Cooper
Nicole E. Drakos
Michaela Hirschmann
Arianna S. Long
Georgios Magdis
Anton M. Koekemoer
Vasily Kokorev
Marko Shuntov
Margherita Talia
Natalie Allen
Santosh Harish
Olivier Ilbert
Henry Joy McCracken
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Daizhong Liu
Louise Paquereau
Jason Rhodes
Michael R. Rich
Brant E. Robertson
Sune Toft
Ghassem Gozaliasl
Source :
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol 973, Iss 1, p L2 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
IOP Publishing, 2024.

Abstract

We present the properties of two candidate massive ( M _⋆ ∼ 10 ^11 M _⊙ ) and dusty ( A _v > 2.5 mag) galaxies at z = 5–7 in the first 0.28 deg ^2 of the COSMOS-Web survey. One object is spectroscopically confirmed at z _spec = 5.051, while the other has a robust z _phot = 6.7 ± 0.3. Thanks to their extremely red colors (F277W–F444W ∼ 1.7 mag), these galaxies satisfy the nominal color selection for the widely studied “little red dot” (LRD) population with the exception of their spatially resolved morphologies. The morphology of our targets allows us to conclude that their red continuum is dominated by highly obscured stellar emission and not by reddened nuclear activity. Using a variety of spectral energy distribution fitting tools and star formation histories, we estimate the stellar masses to be $\mathrm{log}({M}_{\star })={11.32}_{-0.15}^{+0.07}\,{M}_{\odot }$ and $\mathrm{log}({M}_{\star })={11.2}_{-0.2}^{+0.1}\,{M}_{\odot }$ , respectively, with a red continuum emission dominated by a recent episode of star formation. We then compare their number density to the halo mass function to infer stellar baryon fractions of ϵ _⋆ ∼ 0.25 and ϵ _⋆ ∼ 0.5. Both are significantly higher than what is commonly observed in lower- z galaxies or more dust-obscured galaxies at similar redshifts. With very bright ultra-high- z Lyman-Break Galaxies and some non-AGN-dominated LRDs, such “extended” LRDs represent another population that may require very efficient star formation at early times.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20418213 and 20418205
Volume :
973
Issue :
1
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.69c688185f4746fca1548f5f0cd93125
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ad738a