Double trouble: Two spectroscopically confirmed low-mass quiescent galaxies at <i>z</i> &gt; 5 in overdensities

We present the discovery of two low-mass, high-redshift quiescent galaxies, GS-z5-Q1 and COS-z5-Q1, using JWST NIRSpec spectroscopy alongside NIRCam and MIRI photometry. Observed at a redshift of z = 5.39 and z = 5.11, respectively, and with stellar masses of 10 9.6 M ⊙ and 10 9.5 M ⊙ , GS-z5-Q1 and COS-z5-Q1 are two of the most distant quiescent galaxies spectroscopically confirmed to date. They are also by far the least massive (∼10× lower mass). Full spectrophotometric modelling has revealed that COS-z5-Q1 appears to have quenched more than 300 Myr prior to observation ( z ∼ 7) and has a formation redshift of around z ∼ 11, whilst GS-z5-Q1 formed and quenched in a single burst around 150 Myr prior to observation ( z ∼ 6). GS-z5-Q1 is found to lie near the centre of a known high- z overdensity in GOODS-S, as would be expected by galaxy formation models, while COS-z5-Q1 lies towards the outskirts of an overdense region. This highlights the role that environment could play in accelerating galaxy evolutionary processes and could possibly be linked to the galaxies’ quiescent nature. By modelling their stellar populations, we show that these types of low-mass quiescent galaxies could potentially be descendants of the higher z ‘mini-quenched’ galaxies. The discovery of these two low-mass, z &gt; 5 quiescent galaxies illuminates a previously undiscovered galaxy population and motivates further dedicated follow-up surveys to investigate the overall population.