TY - JOUR
T1 - A massive quiescent galaxy at redshift 4.658
AU - Carnall, Adam C.
AU - McLure, Ross J.
AU - Dunlop, James S.
AU - McLeod, Derek J.
AU - Wild, Vivienne
AU - Cullen, Fergus
AU - Magee, Dan
AU - Begley, Ryan
AU - Cimatti, Andrea
AU - Donnan, Callum T.
AU - Hamadouche, Massissilia L.
AU - Jewell, Sophie M.
AU - Walker, Sam
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank J. Aird for helpful discussions. A.C.C. thanks the Leverhulme Trust for their support through a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. R.J.M., J.S.D., D.J.M., V.W., R.B., C.T.D. and M.L.H. acknowledge the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. F.C. acknowledges support from a UK Research and Innovation Frontier Research Guarantee Grant (grant reference EP/X021025/1). A.C. acknowledges support from the grant PRIN MIUR 2017 - 20173ML3WW_001.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/7/27
Y1 - 2023/7/27
N2 - The extremely rapid assembly of the earliest galaxies during the first billion years of cosmic history is a major challenge for our understanding of galaxy formation physics1–5. The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has exacerbated this issue by confirming the existence of galaxies in substantial numbers as early as the first few hundred million years6–8. Perhaps even more surprisingly, in some galaxies, this initial highly efficient star formation rapidly shuts down, or quenches, giving rise to massive quiescent galaxies as little as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang9,10. However, due to their faintness and red colour, it has proven extremely challenging to learn about these extreme quiescent galaxies, or to confirm whether any existed at earlier times. Here we report the spectroscopic confirmation of a massive quiescent galaxy, GS-9209, at redshift, z = 4.658, just 1.25 billion years after the Big Bang, using the JWST Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). From these data we infer a stellar mass of M * = 3.8 ± 0.2 × 1010 M ⊙, which formed over a roughly 200 Myr period before this galaxy quenched its star-formation activity at z=6.5−0.5+0.2 , when the Universe was approximately 800 Myr old. This galaxy is both a likely descendent of the highest-redshift submillimetre galaxies and quasars, and a likely progenitor for the dense, ancient cores of the most massive local galaxies.
AB - The extremely rapid assembly of the earliest galaxies during the first billion years of cosmic history is a major challenge for our understanding of galaxy formation physics1–5. The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has exacerbated this issue by confirming the existence of galaxies in substantial numbers as early as the first few hundred million years6–8. Perhaps even more surprisingly, in some galaxies, this initial highly efficient star formation rapidly shuts down, or quenches, giving rise to massive quiescent galaxies as little as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang9,10. However, due to their faintness and red colour, it has proven extremely challenging to learn about these extreme quiescent galaxies, or to confirm whether any existed at earlier times. Here we report the spectroscopic confirmation of a massive quiescent galaxy, GS-9209, at redshift, z = 4.658, just 1.25 billion years after the Big Bang, using the JWST Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). From these data we infer a stellar mass of M * = 3.8 ± 0.2 × 1010 M ⊙, which formed over a roughly 200 Myr period before this galaxy quenched its star-formation activity at z=6.5−0.5+0.2 , when the Universe was approximately 800 Myr old. This galaxy is both a likely descendent of the highest-redshift submillimetre galaxies and quasars, and a likely progenitor for the dense, ancient cores of the most massive local galaxies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165132412&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41586-023-06158-6
DO - 10.1038/s41586-023-06158-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 37216978
AN - SCOPUS:85165132412
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 619
SP - 716
EP - 719
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7971
ER -