Galaxies in the epoch of reionization are all bark and no bite-plenty of ionizing photons, low escape fractions

Early results from JWST suggest that Epoch of Reionization (EoR) galaxies produce copious ionizing photons, which, if they escape efficiently, could cause reionization to occur too early. We study this problem using JWST imaging and prism spectroscopy for 412 galaxies at 4.5 < z < 9.0. We fit these data simultaneously with stellar population and nebular emission models that include a parameter for the fraction of ionizing photons that escape the galaxy, fesc. We find that the ionization production efficiency, ξion = Q(H0)/LUV, increases with redshift and decreasing UV luminosity, but shows significant scatter, (log ion z, MUV) 0.3 dex. The inferred escape fractions averaged over the population are low, ranging from〈fesc〉 ≃ 2.6% ± 1.4% at 6 < z < 9 to 6.5% ± 2.2% at 4.5 < z < 6, with weak or no indication of evolution with redshift. This implies that in our models most of the ionizing photons need to be absorbed to account for the nebular emission. We compute the impact of our results on reionization, including the distributions for ξion and fesc, and the evolution and uncertainty of the UV luminosity function. Considering galaxies brighter than MUV < −16 mag would produce an intergalactic medium hydrogen-ionized fraction of xe = 0.5 at 5.3 < z < 5.8, possibly too late compared to constraints from from quasistellar object (QSO) sight lines. Including fainter galaxies, MUV < −14 mag, we obtain xe = 0.5 at 6.0 < z < 8.1, fully consistent with QSO and cosmic microwave background data. This implies that EoR galaxies produce plenty of ionizing photons, but that these do not efficiently escape. This may be a result of high gas column densities combined with burstier star formation histories, which limit the time massive stars are able to clear channels through the gas for ionizing photons to escape.