Probing the Earliest Phases in the Formation of Massive Galaxies with Simulated HST+JWST Imaging Data from Illustris

We use the Illustris-1 simulation to explore the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data to analyze the stellar populations in high-redshift galaxies, taking advantage of the combined depth, spatial resolution, and wavelength coverage. For that purpose, we use simulated broadband ACS, WFC3, and NIRCam data and two-dimensional stellar population synthesis (2D-SPS) to derive the integrated star formation history (SFH) of massive ( M _* > 10 ^10 M _⊙ ) simulated galaxies at 1 < z < 4 that evolve into a local M _* > 10 ^11 M _⊙ galaxy. In particular, we explore the potential of HST and JWST data sets reaching a depth similar to those of the CANDELS and ongoing CEERS observations, respectively, and concentrate on determining the capabilities of this data set for characterizing the first episodes in the SFH of local M _* > 10 ^11 M _⊙ galaxies by studying their progenitors at z > 1. The 2D-SPS method presented in this paper has been calibrated to robustly recover the cosmic times when the first star formation episodes occurred in massive galaxies, i.e., the first stages in their integrated SFHs. In particular, we discuss the times when the first 1%–50% of their total stellar mass formed in the simulation. We demonstrate that we can recover these ages with typical median systematic offset of less than 5% and scatter around 20%–30%. According to our measurements on Illustris data, we are able to recover that local M _* > 10 ^11 M _⊙ galaxies would have started their formation by z = 16, forming the first 5% of their stellar mass present at z ∼ 1 by z = 4.5, 10% by z = 3.7, and 25% by z = 2.7.