---
OA_place: publisher
OA_type: diamond
_id: '18854'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: "Context. One of the surprising early findings with JWST has been the discovery
    of a strong “roll-over” or a softening of the absorption edge of Lyα in a large
    number of galaxies at z ≳ 6, in addition to systematic offsets from photometric
    redshift estimates and fundamental galaxy scaling relations. This has been interpreted
    as strong cumulative damped Lyα absorption (DLA) wings from high column densities
    of neutral atomic hydrogen (H I), signifying major gas accretion events in the
    formation of these galaxies.\r\nAims. To explore this new phenomenon systematically,
    we assembled the JWST/NIRSpec PRImordial gas Mass AssembLy (PRIMAL) legacy survey
    of 584 galaxies at z = 5.0 − 13.4, designed to study the physical properties and
    gas in and around galaxies during the reionization epoch.\r\nMethods. We characterized
    this benchmark sample in full and spectroscopically derived the galaxy redshifts,
    metallicities, star formation rates, and ultraviolet (UV) slopes. We defined a
    new diagnostic, the Lyα damping parameter DLyα, to measure and quantify the net
    effect of Lyα emission strength, the H I fraction in the intergalactic medium,
    or the local H I column density for each source. The JWST-PRIMAL survey is based
    on the spectroscopic DAWN JWST Archive (DJA-Spec). We describe DJA-Spec in this
    paper, detailing the reduction methods, the post-processing steps, and basic analysis
    tools. All the software, reduced spectra, and spectroscopically derived quantities
    and catalogs are made publicly available in dedicated repositories.\r\nResults.
    We find that the fraction of galaxies showing strong integrated DLAs with NHI > 1021 cm−2
    only increases slightly from ≈60% at z ≈ 6 up to ≈65 − 90% at z > 8. Similarly,
    the prevalence and prominence of Lyα emission is found to increase with decreasing
    redshift, in qualitative agreement with previous observational results. Strong
    Lyα emitters (LAEs) are predominantly found to be associated with low-metallicity
    and UV faint galaxies. By contrast, strong DLAs are observed in galaxies with
    a variety of intrinsic physical properties, but predominantly at high redshifts
    and low metallicities.\r\nConclusions. Our results indicate that strong DLAs likely
    reflect a particular early assembly phase of reionization-era galaxies, at which
    point they are largely dominated by pristine H I gas accretion. At z = 8 − 10,
    this gas gradually cools and forms into stars that ionize their local surroundings,
    forming large ionized bubbles and producing strong observed Lyα emission at z < 8."
acknowledgement: 'We would like to thank the referee for a detailed and constructive
  report, greatly improving the presentation of the results in this work. We would
  like to thank Peter Jakobsen for his vision and heroic endeavor in optimally designing
  the JWST/NIRSpec instrument and some of its first on-sky observations and for enlightening
  discussions about the intricacies of the NIRSpec data. Further, we would like to
  thank John Chisholm for helpful clarifications and discussions related to the escape
  fraction of ionizing photons and Aayush Saxena for enlightening conversations on
  the escape and absorption of Lyman-α photons. This work has received funding from
  the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under
  contract number MB22.00072. The Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) is funded by the Danish
  National Research Foundation under grant DNRF140. The data products presented herein
  were retrieved from the DAWN JWST Archive (DJA). DJA is an initiative of the Cosmic
  Dawn Center, which is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant
  DNRF140. P.D. acknowledge support from the NWO grant 016.VIDI.189.162 (“ODIN") and
  warmly thanks the European Commission’s and University of Groningen’s CO-FUND Rosalind
  Franklin program. Support from the ERC Advanced Grant INTERSTELLAR H2020/740120
  is kindly acknowledged (A.F.). S.G. acknowledges financial support from the Villum
  Young Investigator grants 37440 and 13160 and the Cosmic Dawn Center. M.K. was supported
  by the ANID BASAL project FB210003. G.E.M. acknowledges financial support from the
  Villum Young Investigator grants 37440 and 13160 and the Cosmic Dawn Center. J.W.
  acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC),
  by the ERC through Advanced Grant 695671 “QUENCH”, by the UKRI Frontier Research
  grant RISEandFALL. 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,
  Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. F.C. acknowledges support from a UKRI
  Frontier Research Guarantee Grant (PI Cullen; grant reference EP/X021025/1). J.H.W.
  acknowledges support by NSF grant AST-2108020 and NASA grants 80NSSC20K0520 and
  80NSSC21K1053. NRT acknowledges support through STFC consolidated grant ST/W000857/1.
  M.J.H. is supported by the Swedish Research Council, VetenskapsrÅdet, and is fellow
  of the Knut & Alice Wallenberg foundation. This work is based in part on observations
  made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from
  the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) 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. Software: This work made
  use of and acknowledge the following software: NumPy (Harris et al. 2020), Matplotlib
  (Hunter 2007), LMfit (Newville et al. 2014), SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020), grizli
  (Brammer 2023a), Astrodrizzle (Gonzaga et al. 2012), and MsaExp (v0.3; Brammer 2023b).'
article_number: A60
article_processing_charge: No
article_type: original
author:
- first_name: K. E.
  full_name: Heintz, K. E.
  last_name: Heintz
- first_name: G. B.
  full_name: Brammer, G. B.
  last_name: Brammer
- first_name: D.
  full_name: Watson, D.
  last_name: Watson
- first_name: P. A.
  full_name: Oesch, P. A.
  last_name: Oesch
- first_name: L. C.
  full_name: Keating, L. C.
  last_name: Keating
- first_name: M. J.
  full_name: Hayes, M. J.
  last_name: Hayes
- first_name: Unknown
  full_name: Abdurro'Uf, Unknown
  last_name: Abdurro'Uf
- first_name: K. Z.
  full_name: Arellano-Córdova, K. Z.
  last_name: Arellano-Córdova
- first_name: A. C.
  full_name: Carnall, A. C.
  last_name: Carnall
- first_name: C. R.
  full_name: Christiansen, C. R.
  last_name: Christiansen
- first_name: F.
  full_name: Cullen, F.
  last_name: Cullen
- first_name: R.
  full_name: Davé, R.
  last_name: Davé
- first_name: P.
  full_name: Dayal, P.
  last_name: Dayal
- first_name: A.
  full_name: Ferrara, A.
  last_name: Ferrara
- first_name: K.
  full_name: Finlator, K.
  last_name: Finlator
- first_name: J. P.U.
  full_name: Fynbo, J. P.U.
  last_name: Fynbo
- first_name: S. R.
  full_name: Flury, S. R.
  last_name: Flury
- first_name: V.
  full_name: Gelli, V.
  last_name: Gelli
- first_name: S.
  full_name: Gillman, S.
  last_name: Gillman
- first_name: R.
  full_name: Gottumukkala, R.
  last_name: Gottumukkala
- first_name: K.
  full_name: Gould, K.
  last_name: Gould
- first_name: T. R.
  full_name: Greve, T. R.
  last_name: Greve
- first_name: S. E.
  full_name: Hardin, S. E.
  last_name: Hardin
- first_name: T. Y.Y.
  full_name: Hsiao, T. Y.Y.
  last_name: Hsiao
- first_name: A.
  full_name: Hutter, A.
  last_name: Hutter
- first_name: P.
  full_name: Jakobsson, P.
  last_name: Jakobsson
- first_name: M.
  full_name: Killi, M.
  last_name: Killi
- first_name: N.
  full_name: Khosravaninezhad, N.
  last_name: Khosravaninezhad
- first_name: P.
  full_name: Laursen, P.
  last_name: Laursen
- first_name: M. M.
  full_name: Lee, M. M.
  last_name: Lee
- first_name: G. E.
  full_name: Magdis, G. E.
  last_name: Magdis
- first_name: Jorryt J
  full_name: Matthee, Jorryt J
  id: 7439a258-f3c0-11ec-9501-9df22fe06720
  last_name: Matthee
  orcid: 0000-0003-2871-127X
- first_name: R. P.
  full_name: Naidu, R. P.
  last_name: Naidu
- first_name: D.
  full_name: Narayanan, D.
  last_name: Narayanan
- first_name: C.
  full_name: Pollock, C.
  last_name: Pollock
- first_name: M. K.M.
  full_name: Prescott, M. K.M.
  last_name: Prescott
- first_name: V.
  full_name: Rusakov, V.
  last_name: Rusakov
- first_name: M.
  full_name: Shuntov, M.
  last_name: Shuntov
- first_name: A.
  full_name: Sneppen, A.
  last_name: Sneppen
- first_name: R.
  full_name: Smit, R.
  last_name: Smit
- first_name: N. R.
  full_name: Tanvir, N. R.
  last_name: Tanvir
- first_name: C.
  full_name: Terp, C.
  last_name: Terp
- first_name: S.
  full_name: Toft, S.
  last_name: Toft
- first_name: F.
  full_name: Valentino, F.
  last_name: Valentino
- first_name: A. P.
  full_name: Vijayan, A. P.
  last_name: Vijayan
- first_name: J. R.
  full_name: Weaver, J. R.
  last_name: Weaver
- first_name: J. H.
  full_name: Wise, J. H.
  last_name: Wise
- first_name: J.
  full_name: Witstok, J.
  last_name: Witstok
citation:
  ama: 'Heintz KE, Brammer GB, Watson D, et al. The JWST-PRIMAL archival survey: A
    JWST/NIRSpec reference sample for the physical properties and Lyman-α absorption
    and emission of ∼600 galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4. <i>Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics</i>.
    2025;693. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243">10.1051/0004-6361/202450243</a>'
  apa: 'Heintz, K. E., Brammer, G. B., Watson, D., Oesch, P. A., Keating, L. C., Hayes,
    M. J., … Witstok, J. (2025). The JWST-PRIMAL archival survey: A JWST/NIRSpec reference
    sample for the physical properties and Lyman-α absorption and emission of ∼600
    galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4. <i>Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics</i>. EDP Sciences. <a
    href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243">https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243</a>'
  chicago: 'Heintz, K. E., G. B. Brammer, D. Watson, P. A. Oesch, L. C. Keating, M.
    J. Hayes, Unknown Abdurro’Uf, et al. “The JWST-PRIMAL Archival Survey: A JWST/NIRSpec
    Reference Sample for the Physical Properties and Lyman-α Absorption and Emission
    of ∼600 Galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4.” <i>Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics</i>. EDP Sciences,
    2025. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243">https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243</a>.'
  ieee: 'K. E. Heintz <i>et al.</i>, “The JWST-PRIMAL archival survey: A JWST/NIRSpec
    reference sample for the physical properties and Lyman-α absorption and emission
    of ∼600 galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4,” <i>Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics</i>, vol. 693.
    EDP Sciences, 2025.'
  ista: 'Heintz KE, Brammer GB, Watson D, Oesch PA, Keating LC, Hayes MJ, Abdurro’Uf
    U, Arellano-Córdova KZ, Carnall AC, Christiansen CR, Cullen F, Davé R, Dayal P,
    Ferrara A, Finlator K, Fynbo JPU, Flury SR, Gelli V, Gillman S, Gottumukkala R,
    Gould K, Greve TR, Hardin SE, Hsiao TYY, Hutter A, Jakobsson P, Killi M, Khosravaninezhad
    N, Laursen P, Lee MM, Magdis GE, Matthee JJ, Naidu RP, Narayanan D, Pollock C,
    Prescott MKM, Rusakov V, Shuntov M, Sneppen A, Smit R, Tanvir NR, Terp C, Toft
    S, Valentino F, Vijayan AP, Weaver JR, Wise JH, Witstok J. 2025. The JWST-PRIMAL
    archival survey: A JWST/NIRSpec reference sample for the physical properties and
    Lyman-α absorption and emission of ∼600 galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4. Astronomy &#38;
    Astrophysics. 693, A60.'
  mla: 'Heintz, K. E., et al. “The JWST-PRIMAL Archival Survey: A JWST/NIRSpec Reference
    Sample for the Physical Properties and Lyman-α Absorption and Emission of ∼600
    Galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4.” <i>Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics</i>, vol. 693, A60,
    EDP Sciences, 2025, doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450243">10.1051/0004-6361/202450243</a>.'
  short: K.E. Heintz, G.B. Brammer, D. Watson, P.A. Oesch, L.C. Keating, M.J. Hayes,
    U. Abdurro’Uf, K.Z. Arellano-Córdova, A.C. Carnall, C.R. Christiansen, F. Cullen,
    R. Davé, P. Dayal, A. Ferrara, K. Finlator, J.P.U. Fynbo, S.R. Flury, V. Gelli,
    S. Gillman, R. Gottumukkala, K. Gould, T.R. Greve, S.E. Hardin, T.Y.Y. Hsiao,
    A. Hutter, P. Jakobsson, M. Killi, N. Khosravaninezhad, P. Laursen, M.M. Lee,
    G.E. Magdis, J.J. Matthee, R.P. Naidu, D. Narayanan, C. Pollock, M.K.M. Prescott,
    V. Rusakov, M. Shuntov, A. Sneppen, R. Smit, N.R. Tanvir, C. Terp, S. Toft, F.
    Valentino, A.P. Vijayan, J.R. Weaver, J.H. Wise, J. Witstok, Astronomy &#38; Astrophysics
    693 (2025).
date_created: 2025-01-19T23:01:52Z
date_published: 2025-01-06T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2026-02-16T12:07:37Z
day: '06'
ddc:
- '520'
department:
- _id: JoMa
doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202450243
external_id:
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month: '01'
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oa_version: Published Version
publication: Astronomy & Astrophysics
publication_identifier:
  eissn:
  - 1432-0746
  issn:
  - 0004-6361
publication_status: published
publisher: EDP Sciences
quality_controlled: '1'
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: 'The JWST-PRIMAL archival survey: A JWST/NIRSpec reference sample for the physical
  properties and Lyman-α absorption and emission of ∼600 galaxies at z = 5.0-13.4'
tmp:
  image: /images/cc_by.png
  legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
  name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0)
  short: CC BY (4.0)
type: journal_article
user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
volume: 693
year: '2025'
...