The eventful life of a luminous galaxy at
JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy yet, at z≳14. With a UV magnitude of –20.81, it is one of the most luminous galaxies at cosmic dawn and its half-light radius of 260 pc means that stars dominate the observed UV emission. We report the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) detection of [O <ns0:sc>III</ns0:sc>]88 μm line emission with a significance of 6.67σ and at a frequency of 223.524 GHz, corresponding to a redshift of 14.1796±0.0007, which is consistent with the candidate C <ns0:sc>III</ns0:sc>] line detected in the NIRSpec spectrum. At this spectroscopic redshift, the Lyman-α break identified with NIRSpec requires a damped Lyman-α absorber with a column density of log(NHI/cm−2) = 21.96. The total [O <ns0:sc>III</ns0:sc>]88 μm luminosity (log(L[OIII]/L⊙) = 8.3±0.1) is fully consistent with the local L[OIII]−SFR relation and indicating a gas-phase metallicity >0.1 Z⊙. Using <ns0:monospace>prospector</ns0:monospace> spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling and combining the ALMA data with JWST observations, we find Z = 0.17 Z⊙ and a non-zero escape fraction of ionizing photons (∼11%), which is necessary by the code to reproduce the UV spectrum. We measure an [OIII]5007 Å/[OIII]88 μm line flux ratio between 1 and 20, resulting in an upper limit to the electron density of roughly 700 cm−3 assuming a single-cloud photoionization model. The [O <ns0:sc>III</ns0:sc>]emission line is spectrally resolved, with a FWHM of 102$ {}^{+29}_{-22}\, $km s−1, resulting in a dynamical mass of log(Mdyn/M⊙) = 9.0±0.2. When compared to the stellar mass, this value represents a conservative upper limit on the gas mass fraction, which ranges from 50% to 80%, depending on the assumed star formation history. Past radiation-driven outflows may have cleared the galaxy from the gas, reducing the gas fraction and thus increasing the escape fraction of ionizing photons.
Publication Details
- Journal
- Springer Link (Chiba Institute of Technology)
- Published
- 2025-04-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202452451/pdf
- Primary Topic
- Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00