Unveiling the distant Universe: Characterizing $z\ge9$ Galaxies in the first epoch of COSMOS-Web
Authors: Maximilien Franco, Hollis B. Akins, Caitlin M. Casey, Steven L. Finkelstein, Marko Shuntov, Katherine Chworowsky, Andreas L. Faisst, Seiji Fujimoto, Olivier Ilbert, Anton M. Koekemoer, Daizhong Liu, Christopher C. Lovell, Claudia Maraston, Henry Joy McCracken, Jed McKinney, Brant E. Robertson, Micaela B. Bagley, Jaclyn B. Champagne, Olivia R. Cooper, Xuheng Ding, Nicole E. Drakos, Andrea Enia, Steven Gillman, Christopher C. Hayward, Michaela Hirschmann, Vasily Kokorev, Clotilde Laigle, Arianna S. Long, Ghassem Gozaliasl, Santosh Harish, Shuowen Jin, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Georgios Magdis, Guillaume Mahler, Crystal L. Martin, R. Michael Rich, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Bahram Mobasher, Louise Paquereau, Alvio Renzini, Jason Rhodes, Kartik Sheth, John D. Silverman, Martin Sparre, Margherita Talia, Francesco Valentino, Aswin P. Vijayan, Stephen M. Wilkins, Lilan Yang, Jorge A. Zavala
Abstract: We report the identification of 15 galaxy candidates at $z\ge9$ using the initial COSMOS-Web JWST observations over 77 arcmin$^2$ through four NIRCam filters (F115W, F150W, F277W, F444W) with an overlap with MIRI (F770W) of 8.7 arcmin$^2$. We fit the sample using several publicly-available SED fitting and photometric redshift codes and determine their redshifts between $z=9.3$ and $z=10.9$ ($\langle z\rangle=10.0$), UV-magnitudes between M$_{\rm UV}$ = $-$21.2 and $-$19.5 (with $\langle $M$_{\rm UV}\rangle=-20.2$) and rest-frame UV slopes ($\langle \beta\rangle=-2.4$). These galaxies are, on average, more luminous than most $z\ge9$ candidates discovered by JWST so far in the literature, while exhibiting similar blue colors in their rest-frame UV. The rest-frame UV slopes derived from SED-fitting are blue ($\beta\sim$[$-$2.0, $-$2.7]) without reaching extremely blue values as reported in other recent studies at these redshifts. The blue color is consistent with models that suggest the underlying stellar population is not yet fully enriched in metals like similarly luminous galaxies in the lower redshift Universe. The derived stellar masses with $\langle \log_{\rm 10} ($M$_\star/$M$_\odot)\rangle\approx8-9$ are not in tension with the standard $\Lambda$CDM model and our measurement of the volume density of such UV luminous galaxies aligns well with previously measured values presented in the literature at $z\sim9-10$. Our sample of galaxies, although compact, are significantly resolved.
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