FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon
Neufeld C, Van Dokkum P, Asali Y, Covelo-Paz A, Leja J, Lin J, Matthee JJ, Oesch PA, Reddy NA, Shivaei I, Whitaker KE, Wuyts S, Brammer G, Marchesini D, Maseda MV, Naidu RP, Nelson EJ, Velichko A, Weibel A, Xiao M. 2024. FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon. Astrophysical Journal. 972(2), 156.
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Author
Neufeld, Chloe;
Van Dokkum, Pieter;
Asali, Yasmeen;
Covelo-Paz, Alba;
Leja, Joel;
Lin, Jamie;
Matthee, Jorryt JISTA 
;
Oesch, Pascal A.;
Reddy, Naveen A.;
Shivaei, Irene;
Whitaker, Katherine E.;
Wuyts, Stijn
All
;
Oesch, Pascal A.;
Reddy, Naveen A.;
Shivaei, Irene;
Whitaker, Katherine E.;
Wuyts, Stijn
All
Department
Abstract
We present results from the JWST First Reionization Epoch Spectroscopically Complete Observations survey on the star-forming sequence (SFS) of galaxies at 1.0 < z < 1.7, around the peak of the cosmic star formation history. Star formation rates (SFRs) are measured from the redshifted, relatively dust-insensitive Paschen-α emission line, and stellar mass measurements include the F444W (4.4 μm; rest-frame H) band. We find SFRs of galaxies with log(M*/M⊙) > 9.5 that are lower than found in many earlier studies by up to 0.6 dex, but in good agreement with recent results obtained with the Prospector fitting framework. The difference (log(SFR(Paα)-SFR(Prospector)) is −0.09 ± 0.04 dex at 1010−11M⊙. We also measure the empirical relation between Paschen-α luminosity and rest-frame H-band magnitude and find that the scatter is only 0.04 dex lower than that of the SFR–M* relation and is much lower than the systematic differences among relations in the literature due to various methods of converting observed measurements to physical properties. We additionally identify examples of sources—that, with standard cutoffs via the UVJ diagram, would be deemed quiescent—with significant (log(sSFR)> −11 yr−1), typically extended, Paschen-α emission. Our results may be indicative of the potential unification of methods used to derive the SFS with careful selection of star-forming galaxies and independent SFR and stellar mass indicators.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2024-09-01
Journal Title
Astrophysical Journal
Acknowledgement
The authors thank the anonymous referee whose comments and suggestions improved the quality of this work.
This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program No. 1895.
Support for this work was provided by NASA through grant JWST-GO-01895 awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.
This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) under contract No. MB22.00072, as well as from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) through project grant 200020_207349. The Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant No. 140.
R.P.N. acknowledges funding from JWST programs GO-1933 and GO-2279. Support for this work was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51515.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555
Cloud-based data processing and file storage for this work is provided by the AWS Cloud Credits for Research program.
This paper made use of several publicly available software packages. We thank the respective authors for sharing their work: IPython (Pérez & Granger 2007), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), seaborn (Waskom et al. 2018), NumPy (Harris et al. 2020), SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020), jupyter (Kluyver et al. 2016), Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), grizli (Brammer 2018; Brammer et al. 2022), Prospector (Leja et al. 2019, 2017; Johnson et al. 2021), FSPS (Conroy et al. 2009a, 2010; Conroy & Gunn 2010a, 2010b; Foreman-Mackey et al. 2014), dynesty (Speagle 2020), EAZY (Brammer et al. 2008), Bagpipes (Carnall et al. 2018), and SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996).
Volume
972
Issue
2
Article Number
156
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Neufeld C, Van Dokkum P, Asali Y, et al. FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon. Astrophysical Journal. 2024;972(2). doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad6158
Neufeld, C., Van Dokkum, P., Asali, Y., Covelo-Paz, A., Leja, J., Lin, J., … Xiao, M. (2024). FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon. Astrophysical Journal. IOP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad6158
Neufeld, Chloe, Pieter Van Dokkum, Yasmeen Asali, Alba Covelo-Paz, Joel Leja, Jamie Lin, Jorryt J Matthee, et al. “FRESCO: The Paschen-α Star-Forming Sequence at Cosmic Noon.” Astrophysical Journal. IOP Publishing, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad6158.
C. Neufeld et al., “FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon,” Astrophysical Journal, vol. 972, no. 2. IOP Publishing, 2024.
Neufeld C, Van Dokkum P, Asali Y, Covelo-Paz A, Leja J, Lin J, Matthee JJ, Oesch PA, Reddy NA, Shivaei I, Whitaker KE, Wuyts S, Brammer G, Marchesini D, Maseda MV, Naidu RP, Nelson EJ, Velichko A, Weibel A, Xiao M. 2024. FRESCO: The Paschen-α star-forming sequence at cosmic noon. Astrophysical Journal. 972(2), 156.
Neufeld, Chloe, et al. “FRESCO: The Paschen-α Star-Forming Sequence at Cosmic Noon.” Astrophysical Journal, vol. 972, no. 2, 156, IOP Publishing, 2024, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad6158.
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